Oviraptor (meaning "egg thief") was a genus of theropod dinosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous period around 75-70 million years ago. Two appear as minor characters in Disney's 2000 animated feature film Dinosaur.
Appearances
Dinosaur
Sometime after a Carnotaur chased off all the other dinosaurs and wrecked the nesting sites, an Oviraptor suddenly appears and tries to look for any eggs that have been abandoned in the chaos. The theropod takes a sudden interest in Aladar's egg that had been left unharmed and intact from the destruction. Knowing that the Carnotaur was nearby, the Oviraptor, rather than feed near a potential threat, decided to steal the egg and hurried off into the jungle. As it attempted to feast on the egg, a second Oviraptor swiped it from its grasp. The Oviraptor pair started fighting each other for the egg, but their fingers eventually lost their grip onto the egg and sent it falling down into the river below. After a brief pause looking down at their lost meal, the two resume their squabble. The species is not seen again for the remainder of the film.
Trivia
Alvarezsaurus concept art by Ricardo Delgado
- In an early concept of Dinosaur, the Oviraptors that were given the role as "egg thieves" in the film's release died during the migration.
- In another early draft of the movie, Oviraptors were to have been portrayed as vulture-like scavengers that followed the herd to feed on its dead members, with the egg thief role instead going to Alvarezsaurus, a dinosaur cut from the final film. Notably, it would have had feathers in this version, just as it did in real life, while the ones in the finished movie were scaly.
- Although Oviraptor has been depicted as a dinosaur adapted for stealing and eating eggs, this theory is under scrutiny. In 1924, a dinosaur nest with eggs discovered by paleontologists in Mongolia was presumed to be made by the ceratopsian, Protoceratops, and discovered nearby were remains of a theropod, which made the paleontologists assume that the dinosaur had died whilst attempting to prey on the eggs, thus it was given the name Oviraptor. However, in the 1990s, new fossil finds and a reexamination of the fossil eggs from the nest showed that the eggs actually belonged to Oviraptor. This showed that Oviraptor was, in fact, a nurturing parent.
- Giant Oviraptor relatives are known to have existed; eggs and skeletal remains belonging to the enormous, 4-meter-tall Oviraptorid named Gigantoraptor erlianensis have been uncovered in the Gobi Desert.
Gallery
Dinosaur
Miscellaneous
External links
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