The article directly quotes a research paper, and it is not the only place where this information is listed. Obviously, wikipedia can't always be trusted, but I'm comfortable with it in this situation.

 

I've gone over both of those pages already, and despite their relation, there's really no grounds for equating Deinonychus and Velociraptors. I don't see any reason that Crichton would have researched them, and then conflated them just due to some obscure taxonomic link. They are two distinctly different dinosaurs known widely and officially under two different names.

I think that the Raptors in the original book were in fact small Velociraptors as some have pointed out here. The movies made them as big as Deinonychus for style, but still called them Velociraptors for obvious marketing reasons... one of many inaccuracies presented in the JP movies for the sake of drama. No big, but it's unfortunate that this misrepresentation has been taken as absolute fact by many impressionable folks.

zmog

 

Damn skippy. Inaccuracies aside, I'll never forget Sam Neill terrorizing that kid who dared call a raptor a six-foot turkey.

 

I was aware of the feathers issue, but I really like the JP movies and books, and still like them best without feathers.

 

If I remember correctly Criton and company admitted to using Deinonychus as the template but used the name Velociraptor because it sounded better. Either way it wasn't the only "adjusting" done to the Dinosaurs in JP. Still doesn't take away from it being a great book and movie, Jurassic Park 3 accomplished that.

 

True... I liked half of the JP movies... yeah, like the first one, and half the second one.  

The inaccuracies didn't really hurt the movies that much. Part 3 was pretty goofy though...

zmog

 

I think the inaccuracies helped some of the dramatic aspects of the movie. For instance, Ms. Tyrannosaurus. The idea that a large, resource-intensive apex predator/scavenger like a T.rex wouldn't be able to detect food if it wasn't actively moving is, of course, pretty ludicrous, frog DNA or not. But when Grant and Lex are caught out in front of her, inches away... well, the first time I saw the movie I couldn't go to sleep that night.

I know Crichton retconned it in the 2nd book; can't remember if they did the same thing in the 2nd movie.

 

I'm a little sketchy on that detail in The Lost World (it's the only one of the three I still don't own, oddly enough), but the amusing reference to it was in Jurassic Park 3, where Grant tries to get everyone to stay still after they unintentionally run into one, and every single person runs away anyway, kinda mocking the best "strategy" to avoid the T. rex.

 

Isn't the 2nd movie the one where they bring up the fact that Tyrannosaurus Rex had the largest olfactory faculty of any animal on earth besides the turky vulture (or something like that...)?

If so, that kind of contradicts the "don't move and it won't eat you" logic of the first movie. That was pretty ridiculous, but it's true... it did make for some pretty tense moments onscreen.

My favourite stupid moment from JP2 was the implication that the Tyrannosaurus on the freighter freed itself from the locked cargo hold, ran around eating every single person on board (including the helmsman on the intact windowed bridge too small for the T-Rex to enter... who apparently was so afraid he forgot to let go of the ship's wheel and tore his own hand off), then after making sure the ship was on a collision course with the NYC dockyards, got back into the cargo hold and shut the electric doors behind her (despite the fact that the controls were on the outside). That's a smart (and magical!) T-Rex!!  

I know that there are possible explanations for those events, but since they are not addressed in the movie or the sequel, we have to go with the most obvious and ludicrous possibility. Absolutely absurd. Just another example of how a big studio film script can be so doctored and mangled that what's left over ceases to make any kind of sense anymore.

However, the spectacle of having a T-Rex rampaging through a modern city certainly helped mitigate some of the stupidity.  

zmog

 

Yeah, I think that takes the cake as far stupid moments in the JP movies go.

 

no

The most I.Q. lacking part in the entire movie, is not basing the alternate manual power station in the hardened command center, but across the island in the middle of nowhere, when the dinosaurs would have escaped by the time you got there in the 1 gas jeep on the muddy roads..

Samuel L. Jackson would not have had to die if they had just built the thing in the main center, they could have just got back to the command center, cut on the power, and waited in the plush center and ate all the 5 star food, until the choppers came.

Paved roads should have been a must in this park too, no need for the fat man to die on the washed out muddy road. Also, why would he have not had a GPS in that spared no expense jeep.

 

The thing with the second film, I suspect there had been a subplot that raptors had been on the ship, as they had on the cargo vessel in the first book, but that the subplot got scrapped and they just never fixed that part of the script.

The thing with the t-rex sight... the first movie had the line when Grant was talking about the raptors to the kid at the start, to the effect of "You stay still, thinking it can't see you if it moves, but you're thinking of a t-rex - the raptor can see you," but in the novel it was during the rex attack they realised it couldn't see them if they didn't move. Which was explained as a side-effect of plugging in the other DNA. As I recall, the dilophoaurs were described as accurately in the novel as is known about them as well, much like the raptors and other dinosaurs. The movies changed quite a bit for visual appeal and action sequences.

As I recall in the novel as well, the power boards weren't in the visitor centre, but were in the compound - it was the fact that the fences were off that let the raptors get in, as well as jumping over the fences.