Video: See a computer-generated view of a velociraptor footprint illuminated by light from a changing angle. The shape is clearer than in a 2D image. (Video: Naturwissenschaften)
JURASSIC PARK had the right ideas about raptors. They were big, they were bad and they roamed in packs – at least when they lived in China 120 to 100 million years ago.
No evidence has previously been found for pack hunting by the two-legged predators, nor for the habit of lifting the deadly-looking claw found on one toe of each foot to keep it from wearing on the ground, another behaviour depicted in the film. Now a trackway found by Rihui Li of the Qingdao Institute of Marine Geology in China changes that.
Li found non-overlapping footprints left by six dromeosaurs – the formal name for raptors – as the animals walked beside a stream. The nature of the rock is such that the tracks were buried soon after they were made, indicating that the creatures which made the tracks were there as a group, says Martin Lockley of the Dinosaur Tracks Museum at the University of Colorado at Denver, who was a member of Li’s team.
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Furthermore, each track shows two long toes but only a stub of the third toe, which bears the long claw, indicating that the animal held the claw off the ground (Naturwissenschaften, ). The film did get one thing wrong. Real velociraptors were smaller than it showed them to be.
Dinosaurs – Learn more in our comprehensive special report.
