Troll_Man
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WWD: Vectiraptor greeni
🕑 Added 2023-05-21 07:23:09 +0000 UTCThe Walking with- franchise is a bit infamous for playing a bit fast and loose with what lived where and when, but one of the most notorious examples of this was the aptly named Utahraptor in Europe. There's no way they did this accidentally when where the animal is known is spelled out like that, nor does the species have the excuse of a wastebasket like many other misplaced animals, so what's the deal?
The answer is that it was based on the idea that since European dinosaur genera like Polacanthus and Iguanodon were also known in North America, the two continents may have been connected via a land bridge at the time, allowing faunal interchange. While this was never known for Utahraptor specifically, I'm sure the producers just couldn't pass up the opportunity to show the biggest raptor ever, with Jurassic Park planted in the general public's knowledge, and Utahraptor having only been described about five years prior, geographical displacement be damned. Of course, now that the American Iguanodon and Polacanthus species have been reclassified in different genera, the evidence that held up the hypothesis of a land bridge crumbled, and the idea has fallen into obscurity, leaving any modern viewer bewildered why the dinosaur with Utah in its name so far from where it's known.
The other major error is its anatomy. This should be obvious to anyone, it's totally scaly. It's weird that the more basal Ornitholestes at least has quills, but the dinosaur much more closely related to birds has nothing (although I've heard anecdotal reports that the Ornitholestes' quills were added very late in post-production). Many exceptional maniraptoran fossils discovered since have made it abundantly clear the extreme likelihood that all dromaeosaurs were densely covered in feathers.
Leaving that well-established fact behind, there's also the issue of the Utahraptor's proportions. The only known fossils of the species at the time were far too fragmentary to give a real idea of its appearance. As a result, nearly all older Utahraptor restorations present it as being an enlarged Deinonychus. WWD is no exception, it even has the throat pouch that was practically ubiquitous for 20th century Deinonychus restorations (copying from Ostrom's original illustration for the species in 1969). More complete fossils of Utahraptor found since indicate it was far more compact and robust animal than previously thought, with a very large skull and short limbs.
Another issue is anachronism; not only did Utahraptor not live where it's shown, it also didn't live when it was shown. This is because it was later found the stratigraphy of the rock layers in which it was found was more precisely dated to the Hauterivian epoch, putting it about ten million years back from the time the episode is set.
Anyway, for the redesign, I picked a dromaeosaur which actually did coexist with Iguanodon and Polacanthus. This again is not ideal, as it's another garbage taxa known from virtually nothing (there are teeth from a giant supposed velociraptorine known from the region, but they've recently been reestablished as possibly being tyrannosauroid instead). Basically everything about its appearance outside of being a fairly large dromaeosaur is hypothetical. It was within a similar size range as Deinonychus, making it big for a dromaeosaur, but much smaller than Utahraptor. Perhaps in the revised episode it would be taking down a much smaller, juvenile Iguanodon.
Comments
the og spot pattern makes so much more sense as feathers than scales!
