Jurassic Park was wrong: Scientists claim raptors did NOT hunt in packs, but like Komodo dragons or crocodiles where individuals may have attacked the same prey

  • Jurassic Park portrays the raptor as a creature that hunts in large packs
  • But experts now suggest that they did not attack prey in coordinated groups
  • The team looked at its modern-day ancestors that do not hunt in packs
  • They now believe raptors hunted more like Komodo dragons or crocodiles 
Velociraptors played a key role in the Blockbuster series 'Jurassic Park', but portrayed the vicious dinosaurs as working in groups to hunt large prey.
However, paleontologists now argue that these prehistoric creatures behaved more like Komodo dragons or crocodiles, as their modern-day ancestors do not hunt in packs.
New evidence suggests the dinosaurs may have attacked the same animal but, unlike the movie, it was not unanimous feat among the group.
The team also found a difference in diet between adults and their young, which leads them to theorize parents did not feed their offspring.'
Paleontologists now argue that these prehistoric creatures behaved more like Komodo dragons or crocodiles, as their modern-day ancestors do not hunt in packs.
Paleontologists now argue that these prehistoric creatures behaved more like Komodo dragons or crocodiles, as their modern-day ancestors do not hunt in packs.
The Velociraptorstor, or commonly known as 'raptor', became famous in Steven Spielberg's 1993 film 'Jurassic Park,' but the film did get a few of the facts wrong.
Joseph Frederickson, a vertebrate paleontologist and director of the Weis Earth Science Museum on the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh Fox Cities campus, said: 'Raptorial dinosaurs often are shown as hunting in packs similar to wolves.'
'The evidence for this behavior, however, is not altogether convincing. Since we can't watch these dinosaurs hunt in person, we must use indirect methods to determine their behavior in life.'
However, 'Jurassic Park' pulled its representation of the raptor from the late famed Yale University paleontologist John Ostrom.
The Velociraptorstor, or commonly known as 'raptor', became famous in Steven Spielberg's 1993 film 'Jurassic Park,' but the film did get a few of the facts wrong
The Velociraptorstor, or commonly known as 'raptor', became famous in Steven Spielberg's 1993 film 'Jurassic Park,' but the film did get a few of the facts wrong
Ostrom first described the dinosaurs as 'traveling in packs and utilizing a combination of cunning and cooperative behavior to take down prey of much larger body size.'
'The problem with this idea is that living dinosaurs (birds) and their relatives (crocodilians) do not usually hunt in groups and rarely ever hunt prey larger than themselves,' Frederickson explained.
'Further, behavior like pack hunting does not fossilize so we can't directly test whether the animals actually worked together to hunt prey.'
He and his team are now proposing raptors behaved more like modern-day Komodo dragons or crocodiles, in that individuals may attack the same prey but not in a coordinated fashion.
'We proposed in this study that there is a correlation between pack hunting and the diet of animals as they grow,' Frederickson said.
When looking at Komodo dragons, adults tend to consume offspring.
The young creatures hide in trees where they find an abundance of food that their parents are unable to access.
And Frederickson noted that animals who hunt in packs do not have a diverse diet.
'If we can look at the diet of young raptors versus old raptors, we can come up with a hypothesis for whether they hunted in groups,' he said.
To understand this concept, scientists analyzed teeth of a raptor that lived in North America about 115 to 108 million years ago.
New evidence suggests the dinosaurs may have attacked the same animal but, unlike the movie Jurassic Park (pictured), it was not unanimous feat among the group
New evidence suggests the dinosaurs may have attacked the same animal but, unlike the movie Jurassic Park (pictured), it was not unanimous feat among the group
Stable isotopes of carbon and oxygen were used to get an idea of diet and water sources for these animals,' Frederickson explained.
'We also looked at a crocodilian and an herbivorous dinosaur from the same geologic formation.'
The scientists found that the Cretaceous crocodilians, like modern species, show a difference in diet between the smallest and largest teeth, indicating a distinct transition in diet as they grew.
'This is what we would expect for an animal where the parents do not provide food for their young,' Frederickson said. 
'We also see the same pattern in the raptors, where the smallest teeth and the large teeth do not have the same average carbon isotope values, indicating they were eating different foods. 
'This means the young were not being fed by the adults, which is why we believe Jurassic Park was wrong about raptor behavior.'
Frederickson also added that the method used in this study to analyze carbon in teeth could be applied to see whether other extinct

WHY DID THE DINOSAURS GO EXTINCT?

Dinosaurs ruled and dominated Earth around 66 million years ago, before they suddenly went extinct. 
The Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event is the name given to this mass extinction.
It was believed for many years that the changing climate destroyed the food chain of the huge reptiles. 
In the 1980s, paleontologists discovered a layer of iridium.
This is an element that is rare on Earth but is found  in vast quantities in space.  
When this was dated, it coincided precisely with when the dinosaurs disappeared from the fossil record. 
A decade later, scientists uncovered the massive Chicxulub Crater at the tip of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, which dates to the period in question. 
Scientific consensus now says that these two factors are linked and they were both probably caused by an enormous asteroid crashing to Earth.
With the projected size and impact velocity, the collision would have caused an enormous shock-wave and likely triggered seismic activity. 
The fallout would have created plumes of ash that likely covered all of the planet and made it impossible for dinosaurs to survive. 
Other animals and plant species had a shorter time-span between generations which allowed them to survive.
There are several other theories as to what caused the demise of the famous animals. 
One early theory was that small mammals ate dinosaur eggs and another proposes that toxic angiosperms (flowering plants) killed them off.  

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