I just finished reading Brian Switek's new book "
My Beloved Brontosaurus"; it's a pretty good book that gives a good overview of how much dinosaur paleontology has changed in the last 40 years. Unfortunately he struck a sour note with me on page 121.
Here he claims that Michael Crichton in Jurassic Park changed the name of
Deinonychus to
Velociraptor because
Velociraptor was too small to be threatening. He claims the name change was due to Greg Paul classified
Deinonychus and
Velociraptor in the same genus.
Ugh! I have been trying to squash that fanboy rumor for years. It is simply not so and reading the book they are supposedly fans of would easily show that this idea is incorrect. Oh and Spielberg’s movie is irrelevant as it omits the very background dialog that identifies the raptors in question. And besides we are talking about Crichton not Speilberg.
The simple fact of the matter is that the Greg Paul’s classification is irrelevant. Yes Paul classified
Deinonychus in the same genus as
Velociraptor but they were still different species. Even worse for Switek (and the fanboys) the novel actually says the animals cloned for the Park were cloned from DNA found in Mongolia and
Deinonychus is a North American genus!
But first let’s see what the novel says about
Deinonychus.
