If your idea of Velociraptor comes from the movies, prepare for a surprise. The real animal was about the size of a coyote, covered in feathers, and lived in a Cretaceous desert in what is now Mongolia.
How big was Velociraptor?
Velociraptor mongoliensis was roughly 1.5 to 2 meters long, and most of that length was its long, stiff tail. It stood only about half a meter tall at the hip and probably weighed around 15 to 20 kilograms. In other words, a large dog, not a person-sized predator.
The evidence for feathers
No Velociraptor fossil has been found with feathers pressed into the rock, but its bones carry a clear clue. In 2007, researchers described quill knobs on a Velociraptor forearm bone. These are small bumps where large feathers attach to the bone, the same feature seen in many living birds. Animals don't grow quill knobs without feathers to anchor, so Velociraptor almost certainly had feathered arms, and very likely a feathered body too.
Its close relatives back this up: many dromaeosaurs (the "raptor" family) from China have been found with complete feather coats preserved.
Life in the Gobi
Velociraptor lived about 75 to 71 million years ago in the Djadokhta Formation of the Gobi Desert, a landscape of sand dunes, seasonal streams and oases. Its neighbors included the small horned dinosaur Protoceratops, the armored Pinacosaurus and several oviraptor-family dinosaurs.
One of the most famous fossils ever found comes from here: the Fighting Dinosaurs, discovered in 1971. It preserves a Velociraptor and a Protoceratops locked in combat, the raptor's sickle claw at the Protoceratops's neck and its arm in the Protoceratops's jaws. Both were probably buried together by a collapsing sand dune or sandstorm.
So where did the movie raptor come from?
The film version is much closer in size to Deinonychus, a larger raptor from Early Cretaceous North America, roughly 3 meters long. Its discovery in the 1960s helped spark the idea that dinosaurs were active, bird-like animals. The movie borrowed the more famous name and gave it a bigger body, and the feathers were left out.
Wear the real raptor
Our Velociraptor Gobi Dawn tee (Plate 005) shows the coyote-sized, feathered hunter crossing the dunes at dawn, and it also comes in a kids' size. For the bigger cousin, see the Deinonychus Forest Edge tee.