Deep TimeLife & Evolution

Velociraptor and the Fighting Dinosaurs

75 million years agoNotable

Velociraptor, a feathered, turkey-sized hunter of the Mongolian dunes, is known best from the Fighting Dinosaurs fossil, where it is locked in combat with Protoceratops.

Longest chain: The Big Bang → First atomic nuclei form → First stars ignite → First galaxies assemble → Milky Way takes shape → The Sun forms → Earth forms → First oceans → First life → Photosynthesis evolves → Great Oxidation Event → Complex cells (eukaryotes) → Multicellular life → First animals → Ediacaran biota → Cloudina, first shells and first predators → Cambrian Explosion → First vertebrates → Jawed fish → Lobe-finned fish → Fish walk onto land → The amniotic egg → The Great Dying → Dinosaurs appear → Birds evolve from dinosaurs → Velociraptor and the Fighting Dinosaurs

The story

Velociraptor mongoliensis lived about 75 to 71 million years ago in the dune fields and dry plains of the Djadochta Formation in Mongolia. It was about 2 m long and 15 kg, with a long, stiff tail, a narrow snout and a sickle-shaped claw about 6.5 cm long on each second toe. Henry Fairfield Osborn named it in 1924 from fossils of the 1923 American Museum expedition. In 2007, quill knobs, where feathers anchor to bone, were found on a Velociraptor forearm, showing that it was feathered.

The most famous fossil, the Fighting Dinosaurs, was found in 1971 by a Polish-Mongolian expedition at Tugrikin Shireh in the Gobi. It shows a Velociraptor gripping the head of a Protoceratops with its hand while its sickle claw sinks toward the throat, and the Protoceratops biting its attacker's arm. They were buried together, probably when a sand dune collapsed or in a sandstorm. The fossil is a rare snapshot of behavior in the Cretaceous, and is a Mongolian national treasure.

Why it mattered

The fossil gives a direct record of dinosaur predator-prey behavior.
Quill knobs on Velociraptor helped show that even non-flying raptors had feathers.
Velociraptor became a pop culture icon, though the film version was far larger than the real animal.