Oviraptor is a species of theropod dinosaur that lived in the Late Cretaceous period 75 million years ago. It appeared as a minor character in Disney's 2000 animated feature film Dinosaur.
Appearances
Dinosaur
Sometime after a Carnotaurus 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, 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 start fighting each other for the egg, but their fingers eventually start losing 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
- Although Oviraptor is depicted as a dinosaur adapted for stealing and eating eggs, this theory is under scrutiny. A dinosaur nest with eggs discovered by paleontologists in 1924 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.
- In an earlier concept of Dinosaur, the Oviraptors that were given the role as egg thieves in the film's release died during the migration.
Gallery
Dinosaur
Miscellaneous
External links
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