Raptor SVG (lat. Velociraptor; from lat. velox – fast and raptor – hunter) – a kind of predatory bipedal dinosaurs from the family of dromosaurs, subfamily of bicycle quarantine. Typical species is Velociraptor mongoliensis. Lived at the end of the Cretaceous period 83-70 million years ago. His remains were first discovered in the Republic of Mongolia. The species V. osmolskae was found in the Chinese Inner Mongolia. The veloceraptor was much smaller than the largest representatives of its subfamily: dacotaraptor, jutaraptor and achillator – but also had a number of progressive anatomical features.
Raptor SVG Description
The Raptor SVG was a small dinosaur, up to 1.8 m long, 60-70 cm high and weighed ≈20 kg.
Like most teropods, the bicyclist had four fingers on his hind limbs, one of which was underdeveloped and not involved in walking, and (like the teropods) stepped on three fingers. Dromosaurs, including a cyclist, used only two: a third and a fourth. On the second one there was a big strongly curved claw, which grew up to 67 mm in length (along the outer edge). It was previously considered their primary weapon for killing and tearing victims apart. Later, however, it was experimentally confirmed that these claws were not used as blades by the cyclist (because their inner curved edge was rounded and the sharp tip of the claw did not break through the skin of the animal, but only pierced it); most likely, they served as hooks with which the predator clung to his prey and held it, sometimes even piercing the animal’s trachea or cervical artery.
A much more important weapon in the cyclist’s arsenal was probably the jaws with sharp teeth. The skull of the bicycle raptor was up to 25 cm long, extended and bent upwards. The upper and lower jaws have 26-28 teeth with serrated cutting edges, spaced and bent backwards to grip and tear the prey. Biomechanically, the lower jaw of the cyclist’s jaw resembled the jaws of a Komoda ram, and thus was well suited to tear off pieces from relatively large prey. Based on the anatomy of the jaws, once proposed interpretations of the way of life of a velociraptor as a hunter of relatively small prey seem unlikely.
The front limbs of the cyclist had three fingers each. The first was the shortest and the second the longer.
The flexibility of the cyclist’s tail was reduced by the bone growths of the vertebrae in their upper part and by the ossified tendons in the lower part. The bone growths stretched along 4-10 vertebrae, which gave stability on turns, especially when running at high speed.
Studying Raptor SVG
The remains (skull and claws of the hind limbs) of the cyclist were first discovered in 1922 in the Mongolian part of the Gobi desert by the expedition of the Museum of Natural History of the USA. In 1924, the museum’s director, Henry Osborne, mentioned these findings in a popular science article and named the animal Ovoraptor djadochtari, later changing the name to Velociraptor mongoliensis.
Later, U.S. expeditions were denied access to the excavation sites of the bicycleraptor, and they were conducted by paleontologists of the USSR, Poland and Mongolia. From 1988-1990, a Sino-Canadian expedition discovered bones of a bicyclist in the Chinese Inner Mongolia. Since 1990-1995, U.S. expeditions to the region have been resumed jointly with Mongolian paleontologists.