Utahraptor - Ancient Animal

[Music] today on ortho two we are going to be talking about the legendary Utahraptor it's huge claws and deadly teeth allowed it to be a very deadly predator it is the biggest Raptor discovered and was bigger than most modern-day bears before we talked about how awesome this animal was we need to talk about its origins Utahraptor is of course a raptor or in more scientific words a dromaeosaurus ores were small to medium sized predators that flourished during the Cretaceous the name dromaeosaurus running lizard because of the mobility that these creatures are thought to have had the group played a similar role in their environment as modern-day cats and dogs the smaller ones such as Velociraptor may have filled a niche similar to small cats or coyotes while the larger dromaeosaurus like Utah or Dakota Raptor may have been like the Lions or wolves of their time the first roaming stores were small and only about three feet in length sinornithosaurus is an example of one of these early Raptors was almost completely covered in feathers except for areas like that face feet and hands it would have resembled a modern-day bird but with a different stance and face evidence of feathers have been discovered on many different dermis or species this includes older species and younger species meaning that not only were feathers ancestral but they also stayed on future species as far as we know all dromaeosaurus had feathers as the Cretaceous went on dromaeosaurus diversified further 126 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous dromaeosaurus reached their all-time greatest size with a huge Utah Raptor large estimates say that this animal could have been over 20 feet long and weighed over 2,000 pounds more conservative estimates put this animal at under 19 feet and 1,100 pounds but there seems to be some sort of a mystery of the true size of this animal just know it was huge at least 19 feet long and heavier than the average polar bear which is the largest land carnivore on earth it was crazy to think that this animal was relatively small compared to some of its dinosaur counterparts but it would still have been the biggest land carnivore on earth if it was still around not only was it huge but it was also deadly its bite force is unknown but for an animal of this size and type I would expect to be very hot definitely over 900 psi and maybe over 2,000 I do not know too much about bite forces or Anatomy to be able to tell you guys a good answer but a modern-day alligator has a bite force of about 3000 pounds I think that Utah Raptors bite would have been over 2,000 pounds but there just isn't enough evidence for me to provide a real answer for you guys what we do know about this animal is that it possessed deadly jaws Utahraptor had 52 razor-sharp teeth that were recurved and serrated this is also known in paleontology as zip code on teeth this would have been excellent for tearing flesh and causing prey to bleed profusely their jaws would have not just been used for eating but they would also play a large part in their hunting strategy now it's time to talk about how they use their hand and foot claws so first the infamous sickle shaped toe claw this animal possessed over the years there's been so many different proposed ideas for the function of this claw that is baffling slashing gripping pinning climbing prey or even climbing trees are popular ideas among researchers there are good arguments for all these reasons and the answer I will give you is basically all these answers claws are multifunction tools they don't have one mutually exclusive purpose I linked an article about this in the description that I recommend you read to understand how complicated their foot claw purpose really is but I don't think these animals did was use these clauses their main killing weapon though that is what is perpetuated in pop culture I don't believe that these animals could cause the damage necessary to take down the animals they hunted I think that they mainly use their mouths to kill their prey also I hate that people think that they use their hand claws for slashing apart prey their claws were used to grip prey rather than killing them their hands could barely stick out past their head and there is no way that they could effectively slash prey they would use their arms to grab prey and then bite them while also hanging on with their feet with smaller animals their feet could have been of excellent use for pinning prey but I think that the toe claws would have worked very well for climbing on top of larger prey there's no physical evidence of what this animal hunted but it is easy to speculate in this environment there lived large and Kaila sores Donn's sauropods and many other smaller dinosaur species since this animal is so large it could have been able to kill any juvenile animals in its environment but it would not be able to take on some of the larger and all versions perhaps they worked in packs to take down these large beasts we have no evidence of pack hunting in this particular species but it makes sense for a relatively small predator to work together to take down large prey the packs that these animals formed would have likely been disorganized we know this because an animal has to be fairly smart to exhibit a coordinated pack strategy on the contrary to what you might think Raptors were not smart there are some of the smartest animals of their time but that is not saying much considering most of their contemporaries were dinosaurs I better just pissed a lot of Raptor fanboys off but the truth is that Raptors are about as smart as a rabbit it is hard to quantify intelligence but according to studies of raptors brain cavity it was much dumber than cats dog and marine animals like dolphins it was quantified to be about as smart as a rabbit which if you've ever hunted or been around rabbits in the wild you know that they're just kind of missing something up there I'm not saying they're complete idiots they're smarter than most of the animals around them so it must have been a pretty big advantage so now let's talk about the feathers that these animals possess and why they had them for survival feathers were originally evolved not for flight but for other purposes the earliest feathers would have resembled hair rather than the highly advanced flight feathers of modern-day birds it is unknown when the first feathers came about what we are sure of is that many different dinosaurs had them we also know that a lot of dinosaurs didn't have them why some dinosaur species had them and some others didn't is somewhat of a mystery but it tells us that if a dinosaur group had them then they must have been advantageous in some way in the case of Utah Raptor the feathers could have been advantageous for a plethora of reasons temperature regulation protection from the outside world mating rituals intimidation and chasing down prey are all popular ideas for why that the feathers would have been advantageous modern-day ostriches have feathers that are not used for flight but rather to keep them cool in their hot environment these feathers are so effective that they are able to stay out in the Sun much longer than the mammals in their environments and it was thought that these animals lived in a relatively warm environment so these feathers would have been very advantageous for keeping them cool that is the most popular idea on why these feathers were advantageous but like I said about their toe claws their feathers could have been used for all those purposes Utahraptor may have used its feathers for balance while chasing down prey and while attacking prey they may have used their arm feathers while on top of a prey animal to stay balanced there isn't much evidence to support this but I personally think that utahraptor would go after small prey that weighs less than them this way they won't have to struggle with prey as much but instead just overwhelm them with their size from what we know these animals are relatively fast and mobile so it's likely that they could have eaten smaller animals rather than huge tanks like ankylosaurus utahraptor and other dromaeosaurs were such an interesting diverse group from our past they're armed to the teeth and must have been deadly hunters personally I'm more of a mammal guy but Raptors seem to be a lot of people's favorite dinosaur and I see why well I think this video has gone on long enough I hope you guys learned something new about some of the coolest animals from our past thanks for watching and I hope you subscribe to see more animals check out my subreddit in the description below comment any scientific inaccuracies I may have made and suggestions for new videos I'll see you guys in the next episode of North o - see ya

Channel: NORTH 02

Views: 12,493

Rating: 4.8719211 out of 5

Keywords: utah, raptor, utahraptor, ancient, animal, prehistoric, dromaeosaur, saur, dino, dinosaur, jurrassic, velociraptor, dakotaraptor, evolution, science, learn, paleo, paleontology, fossil, north 02, trey the explainer, profile, documentary

Id: RoyS5TFThX8

Length: 7min 59sec (479 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 12 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/yungrichx123]

The fuckin Skyrim music😂

[u/Hewhoslays]

Utahraptors aren’t thought to be extremely swift or agile. This is do to their bulkier frame and different leg structure than species like Velociraptor or even the size comparable Dakotaraptor. From what I’ve read most theorize them to be ambush predators that use quick burst to surprise prey and their larger frames are thought to be better for grappling for small amounts of time than fellow dromaeosaurs. Also this guy really needs to do more research for his background photos. The ones where raptors have the bald vulture-like heads have been disproven and Cretaceous North America was like a temperate forest so snow would have been rare to say the least. Finally, the raptors not being intelligent thing is debated at best, since unlike mammal brains, birds don’t necessarily have to have large cranial cavities to be intelligent.

[u/[deleted]]

Is my state the only one with a dinosaur named after it?

[u/Neato]

Can anyone tell me what the hip or crotch bulge is all about? Looks like a third hip between many dinosaur legs. Googling had failed me in this.

[u/Ghostonthestreat]

Honest question here. Could they have been at least as smart as crows, or were they just giant stupid chickens? I shudder to think of the possibility of a murder of flightless crows that size. On the other hand, giant chickens doesn't sound like it would be that much fun either.

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/jojo-says-frick]

one of my favorite dinosaurs! had one on my birthday cake last year!