VELOCIRAPTOR
a meat-eating dromaeosaurid theropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia.
Pronunciation: veh-LOH-sih-RAP-tuh
Meaning: Swift plunderer
Author/s: Osborn (
1924)
Synonyms: Ovoraptor djadochtari
First Discovery: Ömnögovi, Mongolia
Discovery Chart Position: #146
Velociraptor mongoliensis
(Swift Plunderer of Mongolia)
Etymology
Velociraptor is derived from the Latin "velocis" (swift) and "raptor" (plunderer).
The
species epithet,
mongoliensis, is a nod to the area of discovery - Mongolia.
Before Henry Fairfield Osborn named
Velociraptor he mentioned the animal in a popular press article under the name "Ovoraptor djadochtari". However, because that name was not accompanied by a formal description, it is considered a
nomen nudum ('naked name') and therefore is not valid.
ZooBank registry:
urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:FBB04E38-DA08-486A-9B17-9AFA7E68225F.
Discovery
The first fossils of
Velociraptor were discovered in the Djadochta Formation at the "Flaming Cliffs" (aka Bayn Dzak and Shabarakh Usu), Ömnögovi, Mongolia, by Peter Kaisen on August 11th, 1923, during the American Museum of Natural History's Central Asiatic
expeditions.
The
holotype (AMNH 6515) is a crushed skull and a single claw from its toe.
Other species
Velociraptor osmolskae, discovered at SBDE Quarry 99BM-III in Mongolia's Bayan Mandahu Formation in 1999 by the Sino-Belgian Dinosaur Expeditions, was named by Godefroit in 2008 in honor of Polish paleontologist Halszka Osmólska. It's known only from an eye socket bone and a tooth bearing bone from the upper jaw (catalogued as IMM 99NM-BYM-3/3) which exhibits slight differences to the corresponding bones of
Velociraptor mongoliensis. In fact,
Velociraptor osmolskae might not belong to
Velociraptor at all.
In 2020, Mark J. Powers redescribed MPC-D 100/982 — a specimen discovered at the "Volcano" locality at Bayn Dzak in 1995 and initially assigned to
Velociraptor mingoliensis — in his masters thesis and concluded that it represents a third species of
Velociraptor. It has yet to be named.
Estimations
Timeline:
Era: Mesozoic
Epoch: Late Cretaceous
Stage: Campanian
Age range: 86-71 mya
Stats:
Est. max. length: 1.8 meters
Est. max. hip height: 0.5 meters
Est. max. weight: 18 Kg
Diet: Carnivore
Velociraptor
mongoliensis
References
• Osborn HF (November 7th, 1924) "
Three new Theropoda, Protoceratops zone, central Mongolia".
American Museum novitates; no. 144
• Novacek MJ (1996) "
Dinosaurs of the Flaming Cliffs".
• Barsbold R and Osmólska H (1999) "
The skull of Velociraptor (Theropoda) from the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia".
Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, 44(2): 189–219.
• Norell MA and Makovicky PJ (1999) "Important features of the dromaeosaurid skeleton II: information from newly collected specimens of
Velociraptor mongoliensis".
American Museum Novitates, 3282: 1–45.
• American Museum of Natural History (c. 2000) "
Fighting Dinosaurs: New Discoveries from Mongolia: Exhibition Highlights".
• Norell MA and Makovicky PJ (2004) "Dromaeosauridae". Page 196–209 in Weishampel, Dodson and Osmólska (eds.)"
The Dinosauria: Second Edition".
• Turner AH, Makovicky PJ and Norell MA (2007) "
Feather quill knobs in the dinosaur Velociraptor".
Science 317(5845): 1721. DOI: 10.1126/science.1145076
• Godefroit P, Currie PJ, Li H, Shang CY and Dong Z (2008) "A new species of
Velociraptor (Dinosauria: Dromaeosauridae) from the Upper Cretaceous of northern China".
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 28(2): 432-438. DOI: 10.1671/0272-4634(2008)28[432:ANSOVD]2.0.CO;2
• Evans DC. Larson DW and Currie PJ (2013) "A new dromaeosaurid (Dinosauria: Theropoda) with Asian affinities from the latest Cretaceous of North America".
Naturwissenschaften, 100(11): 1041-1049. DOI: 10.1007/s00114-013-1107-5.
• Powers MJ (2020) "The Evolution of Snout Shape in Eudromaeosaurians and its Ecological Significance".
Master Thesis. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta. DOI: 10.7939/r3-hz8e-5n76.
•
Powers MA, Sullivan C and Currie PJ (2020) "Re-examining ratio based premaxillary and maxillary characters in Eudromaeosauria (Dinosauria: Theropoda): Divergent trends in snout morphology between Asian and North American taxa".
Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 547(109704): 109704. DOI: 10.1016/j.palaeo.2020.109704.
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To cite this page:
Atkinson, L.
"
VELOCIRAPTOR :: from DinoChecker's dinosaur archive".
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http://www.dinochecker.com/dinosaurs/VELOCIRAPTOR›. Web access: 07th Mar 2026.
