Velociraptor Trivia
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47 free Velociraptor trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Velociraptor most people picture is a two-metre movie monster; the real animal was the size of a turkey, wore feathers, and lived in the sand dunes of Cretaceous Mongolia. This quiz covers the actual dinosaur: its two recognised species, its long upturned snout, the sickle claw and what it was really for, the quill knobs that prove it had wing feathers, its surprisingly weak bite, and the evidence that it scavenged pterosaurs and fought its own kind. It also tells the discovery story, from Peter Kaisen's find at the Flaming Cliffs in 1923 and Osborn's naming a year later, to the Polish-Mongolian team that dug up the Fighting Dinosaurs in 1971, the Cold War years when Western teams were shut out of the Gobi, and the 'Ichabodcraniosaurus' found without its head. The last stretch is about the myth: how Michael Crichton borrowed Deinonychus and kept the better name, why Utahraptor turned up just as the film crew finished building their raptor, and how an NBA team came to be called the Raptors. Easy questions ask what the name means and how big it was; hard ones want hertz ranges, bite forces in newtons and formation names. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Velociraptor, the Fighting Dinosaurs, Deinonychus and Jurassic Park, and each question carries the sentence that supports it. Our Dinosaurs and Tyrannosaurus Rex quizzes go further.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does the name Velociraptor mean?
Swift thief
Swift thief, from the Latin velox, swift, and raptor, robber. Its namer chose it in 1924 for what he called an alert, swift-moving carnivorous dinosaur.
Q 02Despite its Jurassic Park fame, Velociraptor lived in which geological period?
Cretaceous
Cretaceous. Velociraptor lived about 75 million years ago, some 70 million years after the Jurassic ended, and the film's biggest star, T. rex, came later still.
Q 03Roughly how big was a real Velociraptor?
About the size of a turkey
About the size of a turkey: about two metres at most from nose to tail tip and only half a metre tall at the hip. The man-sized hunters of the films were scaled up from a much bigger relative.
Q 04Which fossil formation in Mongolia has produced most Velociraptor specimens?
Djadochta
Djadochta. American Museum of Natural History expeditions first explored it in the 1920s and pulled Velociraptor and several other new dinosaurs out of it within a few field seasons.
Q 05Velociraptor belongs to which family of feathered, sickle-clawed dinosaurs?
Dromaeosauridae
Dromaeosauridae. Like birds, its members had a wrist joint that let the hands swivel sideways, the same motion that powers a bird's flight stroke.
Q 06What distinguishes Velociraptor's skull from those of its close relatives?
Long and low with an upturned snout
Long and low with an upturned snout. The film raptors got it wrong: they were given the size, proportions and snout shape of a bigger relative instead.
Q 07Which American explorer led the 1920s Gobi expeditions that found the first Velociraptor?
Roy Chapman Andrews
Roy Chapman Andrews led the American Museum of Natural History's Gobi expeditions of the 1920s. They set out to prove that Asia was the cradle of humankind and instead made their name with dinosaurs.
Q 08The first Velociraptor skull was found in 1923 at which famous fossil site?
The Flaming Cliffs
The Flaming Cliffs. The American fossil hunters who dug there in the 1920s coined the name because the red sandstone seems to glow at sunset.
Q 09The famous 'Fighting Dinosaurs' fossil preserves a Velociraptor locked in combat with which dinosaur?
Protoceratops
Protoceratops. The plant-eater went down fighting: its beak is clamped on the raptor's right arm, which it had probably broken.
Q 10The Fighting Dinosaurs were discovered in 1971 by a team from which two countries?
Poland and Mongolia
Poland and Mongolia. American teams had dug in the Gobi in the 1920s but did not return until 1990, so for decades Polish and Soviet crews did the digging with Mongolian colleagues.
Q 11Which cause of death for the Fighting Dinosaurs replaced the original drowning idea?
Buried by a collapsing dune or sandstorm
Buried by a collapsing dune or sandstorm. The pair lie in ancient dune sands, still locked in their fighting poses, so the burial must have been almost instant.
Q 12The 2007 proof that Velociraptor had feathers came from a row of bumps on which part of its skeleton?
Its forearm
Its forearm. The bumps on the ulna are quill knobs, where the long arm feathers of living birds are anchored, so a suspicion based on its feathered relatives became proof.
Q 13A headless Velociraptor-like skeleton nicknamed 'Ichabodcraniosaurus' references a character by which author?
Q 21A 2011 model of how Velociraptor killed compares its hunting style to which modern animals?
Eagles and hawks
Eagles and hawks. In this model the dinosaur leapt on its victim and pinned it under its body weight, using the big claw as these birds use a talon, to keep its grip on struggling prey.
Q 22A 2005 BBC test with a mechanical raptor leg and a pork belly found the sickle claw failed to do what?
Tear the abdomen open
Tear the abdomen open. The claw punctured the pork but could not rip it, which sank the old picture of raptors disembowelling their prey; experts now see it as a hook for pinning victims down.
Q 23Comparisons of scleral rings suggest Velociraptor was active mostly when?
At night
Washington Irving
Washington Irving created Ichabod Crane, the schoolmaster chased by a headless horseman. Long filed as a Velociraptor, the skeleton became a new animal in 2021, named Shri devi after a Buddhist deity.
Q 14Which relative of Velociraptor had long feathers on its legs as well as its arms, giving it four wings?
Microraptor
Microraptor, a tiny dinosaur under a metre long. Pigment cells preserved in one fossil suggest that its plumage was a glossy black.
Q 15Velociraptor's enlarged sickle claw was on which toe of each foot?
The second
The second toe. It was held up off the ground, so the animal walked on just two toes, and fossil trackways left by its relatives show no mark from the big claw.
Q 16Velociraptor fossils show that it shared which feature of the modern bird skeleton?
A wishbone
A wishbone, the fused collarbones of modern birds. Dinosaurs were long thought to lack them, which for decades was taken as strong evidence that birds could not be their descendants.
Q 17In Jurassic Park, the caged raptors systematically test which part of their pen for weaknesses?
The electric fences
The electric fences. 'They remember,' warns the park's warden, who says the raptors never attacked the same place twice and went for the wires whenever the feeders came.
Q 18The presence of quill knobs led researchers to suggest that Velociraptor's ancestors could do what?
Fly
Fly. Birds that have lost the power of flight typically lack quill knobs, so the team read them as a leftover from winged ancestors; Velociraptor itself was too heavy and short-armed to take off.
Q 19What do palaeontologists think made up most of Velociraptor's diet?
Small reptiles and mammals
Small reptiles and mammals. Its narrow jaws and light build suit quick, snapping bites at nimble prey, and few predators tackle animals more than half their own weight.
Q 20Velociraptor belongs to which major group of dinosaurs, alongside Allosaurus and Spinosaurus?
Theropods
Theropods. The name means 'beast foot', as in a mammal's, yet theropod feet actually look far more like those of birds.
Its horned prey seems to have been active in short bursts through the day, so the famous fight may have happened at twilight.
Q 24A 2012 paper described a Velociraptor with the bone of what animal in its gut?
An azhdarchid pterosaur
An azhdarchid pterosaur. The flying reptile was too big and dangerous for a small raptor to tackle, so experts think it picked the bone from a carcass instead of making the kill.
Q 25Unhealed tooth punctures on one Velociraptor skull show the animal was probably killed by what?
One of its own kind
One of its own kind: the two rows of holes match the size and spacing of Velociraptor teeth. The bone never began to heal, so the bite to the head was probably what killed it.
Q 26In Jurassic Park III, what do the Velociraptors hunt the stranded humans to get back?
Their stolen eggs
Their stolen eggs. Grant's assistant Billy took them from a nest, hoping to sell them to fund the dig, and the raptors retreat as soon as they have reclaimed them.
Q 27Which actor plays Alan Grant, the palaeontologist who digs up a raptor skeleton in Jurassic Park?
Sam Neill
Sam Neill. Early in the film his Grant scares a mocking boy with a fossil raptor claw, acting out how the animal would slash its prey.
Q 28Which of these famous dinosaurs had already been extinct for tens of millions of years when Velociraptor lived?
Stegosaurus
Stegosaurus. It died out about 145 million years ago, so it lay about as far in Velociraptor's past as Velociraptor lies in ours, while the other three were among the very last dinosaurs of all.
Q 29The Jurassic Park raptors were actually modelled on which related dinosaur?
Deinonychus
Deinonychus. By its discoverer's account, the novel's author apologised for borrowing the smaller animal's name, saying Velociraptor simply sounded 'more dramatic'.
Q 30Which author put Velociraptor at the centre of his 1990 novel Jurassic Park?
Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton. He met Yale palaeontologist John Ostrom several times while writing it and, by Ostrom's account, based his raptors on Ostrom's own find in almost every detail.