The Dinosaur That Inspired Jurassic Park Was An Accidental Discovery
Are you one of those people that obsessively watched the Jurassic Park movies? Well, we’re here to tell you that the dinosaur inspiration in that movie was made by mistake. In the movie Jurassic Park, the directors portrayed a Velociraptor. While they’re real dinosaurs that lived in Asia around 75 million years ago, their portrayal in the movie was more accurately inspired by a different dinosaur, the Deinonychus, which is the Velociraptor’s cousin.
The Deinonychus means “terrible claw,” and scientists made its accidental discovery in the 1930s. They were searching for Tenontosaurus, a completely different dinosaur. Then, Barnum Brown found the remains of this dinosaur, which inspired Jurassic Park. Comparatively, the Deinonychus is a pony, while the Velociraptor was a small dog (Science Focus).