[Crazy Jetty]

Quote:

Originally Posted by trebleshot

Yeah, from what I understand, Crichton based his novel on Gregory S. Paul's taxonomy which referred to Deinonychus as Velociraptor antirrhopus. But that terminology fell out of usage by the time the movie was made. Also, Spielberg purposely made them even larger in size, due to their increased role as antagonists. The funny part about that is that after the film came out, larger skeletons of Deinonychus were found that roughly matched the sizing depicted in the film.

That's the biggest problem I see when doing anything involving dinosaurs. The science and our understanding of dinosaurs is fluid - it changes with each new piece of data. I distinctly remember a time when it was thought that no dinosaurs had feathers (even though they were considered ancestors of birds). Now there is conclusive proof to the contrary.

Grimlock from G1 is a prime example of this as well. When his toy was first made, his dinosaur mode was considered a (mostly) accurate version of what a T-Rex would have looked like. Now we know that it was way off.

I have seen the Dinosaur Train show and toys (my daughter is a big fan) and I applaud the show's creators for trying to be as accurate as possible given the style and theme. And IIRC, they had accurate versions of both Deinonychus and Velociraptor.

I haven't heard of any larger deinonychus discovered, but then there's so much to keep track of, I'm finding more is slipping passed me than used to. So I admit I may be wrong. However, I believe you may be referring to the discovery of Utahraptor which was discovered about the timeframe you're referring to, and slightly larger than the raptors in the film.
Also Utahraptor probably has about the fastest turnaround from it's announcement to toy ever, as Kenner put one in their JP line almost immidiately.

As for grimlock, funnily I just had a conversation about him. When his toy was originally designed as a diaclone, they were already overturning almost all the old concepts about dinosaurs. By the time the Transformers came out, the old portrayals only lived in pop culture. And that's where there was a big war over dinosaurs. The new concepts (Which paleontologists were actually aware of right from the start) were not popular. Pop culture didn't want to embrace them, schoolbooks didn't want to embrace them, and some paleontologists didn't, either (I used to get cs, ds, and fs in the eighties on my reports in school because I was constantly pointing out the schoolbooks were wrong). That, combined with the general ignorance of most cartoon writers and toy designers... well, the eighties were full of 50s stereotypes.
It's why I love Dino-Riders so much. Everything about them took dinosaurs seriously (The only reason the Rex is dragging it's tail is exclusively for stability of the toy. Kentrosaurus and Deinonychus held their tails high)

On a side note, Grimmy's toy almost makes me wonder if his designers were aware of the newer theories, as his tail is almost straight, and it can take an anatomically correct stance and look good doing it. (Something that does not work for his godaweful MP dinosaur mode. That thing makes me ill)