Holy Late Cretaceous Therapods. Those Veliciraptors were twisted!

The dinosaur made famous by Jurassic Park (We never understood why they put this dinosaur in the movie, the Jurassic period was many millions of years earlier, but that’s another story).

Dr Ivo was able to take some pictures of a rare, preserved skeleton from Mongolia at the dinosaur museum in Fruita, CO, while visiting with his family.

These bad boys (and girls) were fast predators, and one of the things that made them that way, was the fact that they were built for speed!

Take a look at theses hips! Note the extreme retro torsioned angle of the femur heads. We remember that femoral retro torsion limits internal rotation of the hips (OK, so you don’t remember? click here for a review).

Now lets think about this. Externally rotate your thigh and lower leg. What do you notice? Hopefully you notice it puts your foot in more supination. This makes it into a more rigid lever, better for pushing off and better for sprinting!

Have you ever seen a sprinter? do they run on their toes? Is their foot more supinated? Ever see a velociraptor run? Check out this sequence from the “Dinosaur Planet” series. Remember, only their toes are on the ground and the thing that looks like a backwards knee is actually their ankle. 

Since their legs are so close to the body, there is little need for internal rotation, so why not maximize the effect and assist in supination?

Wow! Are you finally convinced that torsions are cool? After all, they appear to have been around for at least the last 75 million years and probably longer. 

The Gait Guys. Quarternary Geeks of the Cenozoic Era. Yes, we study dinosaur gait too…