Why Did Raptors Have ‘Terrible Claws’?

in 1969 a dinosaur was found in Montana that had a claw on its foot as large as a kitchen knife and perhaps as sharp as one - this dinosaur was named anonymous or terrible claw and this highly specialized foot weapon is shared by most of its family dromaeosaurus better known as Raptors because of Jurassic Park the Raptor sickle claw is one of the most famous dinosaur features known and conventional wisdom is that they were used as slashing tools to disembowel their prey but outside of making a compelling movie monster there is no reason to believe that this is what Raptors used them for and also many dromaeosaurus had differently shaped claws and Raptors themselves had many different shapes and ranged from the size of a chicken to larger than a polar bear so what all of these animals using their sickle claw in the same way for the longest time sickle claws were interpreted as slashing weapons used against either their prey or other Raptors however this is now fallen out of favor Raptors were compared with large flightless birds like cassowaries or ostriches that have inflicted serious injuries on humans and dogs by slashing at them with their claws the problem is that although ostriches and cassowaries have attacked and even killed people in this way it is actually very rare and the majority of injuries caused by these birds are broken bones or internal bleeding from percussive attacks adding to this the curved and rounded sickle claw that Raptors had is not an optimum shape for slash attacks in the early 2000s it was generally accepted for these reasons that the sickle claw was not really used for slashing and instead used to puncture the famous fossil the fighting dinosaurs seems to depict a Velociraptor jabbing its sickle claw into the neck of a Protoceratops but it was impossible to tell if this was in defense or offense and it can't be known from one fossil if this was how they hunted this is not to say that Raptors never slashed or Jam to any of their victims with their sickle claw but just that this was not necessarily the primary purpose of their claws and seeing as the sickle claw and foot shape was a very diverse and different all across romi a solid family different raptors may have used them in different ways and for some Raptors their primary purpose may not have even been as weapons in one study they compared the core of a Velociraptor with the core of an eagle owl and it was found the way climbing stresses were being distributed across the bone was similar the tip of the claw may have been used for stabbing prey that the curved and expanded base would have helped transfer the stress loads evenly onto the foot while climbing the curvature of the sickle claw also compared nicely with other climbing birds and mammals of the present day as generally claws that are used for climbing tend to be more curved climbing dinosaurs have quite a controversial history within paleontology but given these findings climbing Raptors are at least plausible to Nauticus the dinosaur that was named after its terrible claw also had a claw that have the right amount of curvature for it to potentially make a good tree climber but with Deinonychus some scientists have gone even further than this a fully grown Deinonychus is around three and a half meters long but there is a specimen of Deinonychus that was about one metre long called MCZ 87 91 it is thought to be a juvenile Raptor the Raptor was smaller but also differed in other ways most importantly that its limbs were larger proportionately to their body and had stronger joints the interpretation of a study in 2015 is that these little Deinonychus had some flight capabilities the theory is that the small Deinonychus were able to fly and climb trees and then as they got older shifted their niche to being flightless ground predators this is not as crazy as it sounds there are no animals today that could be compared with such a strange set of life stages but given the countless different lineages of birds that have ended up flightless some of them may have had a weird transitional stage where they could have only flown for part of their life and this is what may have been happening with Deinonychus it is also possible that Raptors used the claw for digging many birds and mammals dig by scratching the ground to move the dirt away like a spade and as a result have evolved larger feet or four limbs to help them with this lifestyle but don't tend to develop a singular extended digit like in the case of Raptors however some methods of digging do sea animals of of an extended claw-some hang garlands and anteaters have a slightly extended digit to they used to break into insect nests by puncturing a hole that they then make bigger by wiggling their klore around and then lick up the insects that fall out of the hole although there is no evidence that this is how any wraps are lived it has been shown that at least a few species of Raptor were capable of the range of movement required to hook open an insect nests large Raptors like Deinonychus or nekron raptor may have adopted the same digging methods as pangolins but not to get insects and instead to apprehend smaller vertebrates from burrows or ones that were residing in insects nests and maybe some species of small raptor like raha novice or Bambi Raptor that were less than a metre long were actually part-time insectivores this is actually quite plausible because many small carnivorous animals tend to be a little bit insectivorous the only issue with this theory is that many of the animals that dig like this today have relatively straight claws not like the curved ones we see on Raptors small Raptors like bambiraptor may have also used their claws to help me their small prey today the Cerie Emma found in South America has an extended digit as well the bird will rip apart its prey of rodents and lizards by holding them in its beak and tearing at them with his sickle claw it's very likely that a small Raptor may have been doing this with similar prey items 70 million years ago the most accepted hunting methods the medium-to-large Raptors probably used that explains why they have such a specialised giant claw is that they killed their victims in a very similar way to modern birds of prey by quark Sandy Eagles this theorize model of Raptor attack has been named the Raptor prey restraint it proposes that Raptors would ambush their prey and then pin them down under their body weights holding them in place by tightening their large sickle claws once the creature has been restrained they would feed on it while still alive and the animal would die of blood loss or organ failure the Raptors may have also flapped their wings and used their large tails to balance themselves on top of the victim while it was struggling this is seen with the calamitous hawk when it attacks marine iguanas it will just flap its wings to remain in place while the marine iguana is struggling to get away in nature the animals with feet most closely resembling the feet of Raptors are large birds of prey like eagles and hawks adding to this studies have shown that they have a similar range of motion in their claws but most importantly they also have one claw that extends beyond the others some Raptors like Deinonychus Velociraptor and others also have very short and thick metatarsals compared with other dinosaurs of a similar sized metatarsal bones are the bones between the ankles and the toes and having metatarsals that are thick and short makes sense if Raptors were capable of strong grasping actions with their claws so out of all these theories of how Raptors used their circle claw to catch their prey this is probably the most likely one of the problems with this model of hunting though is that there is some evidence that could point to Raptors hunting animals considerably larger than themselves to a point that is unheard of in any living animals it may have proven difficult to restrain an animal if it was 10 to 15 times the size of a raptor trying to hunt it one example of this is velociraptors hunting Protoceratops and the other is that many teeth and bite marks belonging to Deinonychus have been found in a very large herbivore called - known to Saurus that it shared its habitat with although an adult Protoceratops may have been three to four times larger than a Velociraptor they may have still been able to kill them via digging their claws into their backs this probably wouldn't restrain them like it would with smaller animals but they wouldn't necessarily need to considering birds of prey like Golden Eagles are documented killing animals as large as Sika deer without restraining them there are a few ways that Eagles are able to do this but one way is by grabbing them with their claws and then just holding on as the prey animal struggles its body weight will widen the wounds meaning the Eagles are able to kill animals much larger than themselves so if a loss a raptor were regular hunters of Protoceratops this may have been how they did it within the Raptor prey restraint theory however in the case of Deinonychus huntington onto soros the size differences between these two creatures is absolutely massive they may have been able to take them down by deploying different hunting methods sometimes they may have hunted in packs although the evidence for this is not that great so alternatively they may have just never actively under them the teeth found on there maybe from deinonychus scavenging them after they had died although the Raptor prey restraint is a very good explanation for the giant Raptors sickle claw it almost certainly only applies to some Raptors and many other dromaeosaurus with similarly enlarged claws wouldn't have hunted like this ughter Raptors for instance have a claw that is quite different from other Raptors Utahraptor was a giant possibly weighing around half a ton which is larger than a polar bear so it's claw was really big but a lot less like a sickle claw than some of its other family members comparing its claw with another large raptor called Takota raptor shows although they have similar sized claws the curve was a lot less pronounced in utahraptor and also the bulge at the end where the claw connects to the muscle is not there suggesting the Utahraptor would have had a lot less control over its claw Utahraptor also had differences in body shape - Dakota Raptor - u2 Raptors were the largest known dromaeosaurus and they had a much heavier build than many other Raptor species including much thicker legs however Dakota Raptors were basically a big version of smaller wraps of species like Deinonychus and Velociraptor in body shape it could have been that utahraptor used its claw a lot less than other Raptors as it had developed to be a lot more like other large theropod dinosaurs than a raptor and had a fourth away from using a sickle claw as much whereas Dakota Raptor still hunted by restraining its prey so it may have hunted like a quarters hun eagle southern hemisphere species of Raptor were quite different in build to Raptors in the north as well we usually think of animals like Deinonychus and Velociraptor as quick and agile but they're thick and short metatarsals that would have made it possible for them to crush their prey under their feet would have actually made them a lot more likely to be strong but slowish ambush predators however many of the raptors found in the southern hemisphere like nekron raptor were not built like this and actually had very long and slender feet this indicates that they would have been more agile and may have hunted in a different way and probably would have enjoyed smaller prey than their northern relatives so it is thought that dromaeosaurus used to be more agile but during the Cretaceous when the northern and southern hemisphere were not connected many of the Raptors the Northern Hemisphere starts to evolve large strong claws to restrain fairly large prey but the raptors of argentina and other parts of the southern hemisphere remained quick and agile and may have a hunted prey like little mammals or lizards so the use of raptors most terrifying feature could have differed from animal to animal it may have been primarily used as something quite humble and non-threatening as a climbing or digging tool or maybe it was used as something even more terrifying such as to crush prey alive beneath their feet thank you so much for watching a big shout out to all my patrons including the big contributors like Ken Ham Sammy Vaz Grimm Marshall Green Falls and Brendon clop if you enjoy content like this then consider becoming a patron as well you

Channel: Moth Light Media

Views: 121,138

Rating: 4.9512973 out of 5

Keywords: Raptor Claw, Claw, Sickle Claw, Raptor, Raptors, Dromeosaurids, Fighting Raptors, Raptor Attack, Veloviraptor, Dienonychus, Neuquenraptor, UtahRaptor, Dakotaraptor, Purpose of the Raptor Claw, Birds of Prey, Raptor Prey Restraint, Digging, Climbing Dinosaurs, Digging Dinosaurs, Climbing Raptors, Bambiraptor, Insectivorous Raptors, Puncture Raptros, Bird Like Dinosaurs, Raptors Climbing Trees, Southern Dinosaurs, South american Dinosaurs, Terrible Claw, Jurassic Park

Id: 2CWpV0hQ-P4

Length: 12min 8sec (728 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 28 2020