Biggest peeve with those movies were how they created the deinonychus and then just decided to name them velociraptors. Like they excavated the skeleton in Montana (Deinonychus are found throughout NA, Velociraptors are found in Asia) Velociraptors were at most 6 feet in length from head to tail, so they'd come up to your thigh on a roughly averaged size human, as opposed to deinonychus who were 11+ ft long, and therefore stood at head height or higher
It would have been so easy to not spread this false info of velociraptors being this huge killing machine, because they weren't. Those were Deinonychus or other large raptors, like the Utahraptor or Dakotaraptors which were even bigger than Deinonychus
I think it's entirely because the name "velociraptor" sounds awesome. Plus real velociraptors were only about the size of a turkey (which I think is something they wink at in the opening scene on the archeological dig site) and that's not nearly as menacing.
It is implied in the book that they made mistake, although they don't say it specifically. Dr. Wu says that they don't know what dinosaur it is until it hatches, so when they got a raptor they said it was a Velociraptor mongoliensis, because the amber was from China, and Grant says that is interesting because they just dug up a antirrhopus, referring to Deinonychus antirrhopus. Also Velociraptor antirrhopus is an alternate name for Deinonychus, so it would technically still be correct, although that name isn't used anymore. They even mention Deinonychus in comparison to Velociraptor later on. Like I said, they don't specifically say it was a mistake, but seems like a lot of detail to just throw in there for no reason.
Chrichton consulted John Ostrom while writing the book, so he was well aware, but decided to go with the name Velociraptor because it sounds scarier.
Of course non of that is in the movie, but Spielberg was also aware and originally was going to call it Deinonychus but changed it for the same reason as Chrichton.
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u/jackd90 May 26 '21
There was a really good documentary that showed how velociraptors walked called Jurassic Park.