Utahraptor is an official state dinosaur and an NBA mascot's inspiration. Understanding it has been anything but simple. ... “It was twice as big as the same claw on Deinonychus,” Kirkland says.

For one thing, the dinosaurs had actually been based on the sickle-clawed predator Deinonychus, and the movie monsters were much larger than either Deinonychus and Velociraptor.

Here’s how the Deinonychus, ... The Velociraptors of "Jurassic Park" have a lot in common with Utahraptor, above, which was first discovered not long before the film was made.

One night at dinner, 10-year-old dinosaur fan Kenyon Roberts asked a family guest — state Sen. Curt Bramble — why Utah had made the Allosaurus its official state fossil.

Brontomerus lived about 110 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous Period, and probably had to contend with fierce "raptors" such as Deinonychus and Utahraptor.

When Deinonychus, a wolf-sized raptor, was uncovered and studied in the early to mid-20th century, palaeontologists were astounded. ... In Band of Brothers, we meet Utahraptor.

In real life, many of the dinosaurs vary in size and are often covered in feathers, but a few of them actually don't look that different. Let's start with Velociraptor, one of the most feared ...