Velociraptor

Velociraptor is perhaps one of the most famous – and most misunderstood – of the dromaeosaurs.

First described in 1924 by famous paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn (according to the UK’s Natural History Museum), Velociraptors were quite modest in size and weighed only about 45kg.

Velociraptors also have extremely sharp senses of smell and vision, and may be nocturnal.

If you could go back in time to the Cretaceous period, you probably wouldn’t have to worry about Velociraptor’s predation.

Deinonychus

This was also a bird-like theropod, this species lived in North America and was a larger version of Velociraptor, twice the size.

Deinonychus was discovered in the 1960s by paleontologist John Ostrom, who also gave it its name, meaning `terrible claw`.

Microraptor

Microraptor is a very small genus of raptor dinosaur.

The American Museum of Natural History explains that it had bird-like feathers on both its front and hind limbs.

National Geographic tells us that this small raptor regularly ate early birds.

Utahraptor

The largest and perhaps most fearsome ornithischian dinosaur that ever existed on our planet was the Utahraptor.

Utahraptor weighs nearly 300kg and has a length of up to 7m.

In 2001, a series of Utahraptor fossils were found in Moab.

Rahonavis

Rahonavis is considered one of the earliest progenitors of birds.

Rahonavis has been compared to the most famous early ancestor of birds, Archeopteryx.

However, academics believe that Rahonavis appears to be a transitional species between dinosaurs and their bird predecessors and Archeopteryx.

Bambiraptor

According to Dinosaurs: A Visual Encyclopedia, in 1995, Wes Linster (a 14-year-old boy) was hunting for fossils in Montana’s Glacier National Park when he came across a small skeleton.

Analysis by paleontologists discovered that it was a raptor dinosaur, and the scientists who described the fossil named it Bambiraptor.

Interestingly, Bambiraptor had a relatively large ratio between brain size and body size.

Reference: Grunge;