Popular Raptor

Proof that the author did once like a lot
of sports all at once, but more importantly, the
pretty great 1995 Toronto Raptors logo, mostly.

Utahraptor once inspired an arguably wonderful digital mashup on my part, more because I saw an opportunity than the fact that I like basketball. Despite my less-than-excited (as an adult; see photo) attitude toward basketball, Utahraptor was actually the inspiration, it is said, for one basketball team's mascot (and it was not the Utah Jazz, all of my artwork aside). Their logo is not nearly as cool as it used to be of course (dinosaurs playing basketball > basketball with claw marks), but the Toronto Raptors still exist. This has not been the Utahraptor's only foray into the sphere of popular culture. As we witnessed the other day there are many video game incarnations of this large and deadly dromaeosaur and, if we count the "velociraptors" of the Jurassic Park franchise as misnamed Utahraptors, they have appeared in 5 full length films; being highlighted in pretty much every film at some point (unlike the barely seen Dilophosaurus or Triceratops of Jurassic Park). Aside from reading what science I could as a pre-teen and teenager, my major introduction to Utahraptor was through a short novel titled Raptor Red. Whether you like the story or the writing or the science within Bakker's imagined dinosaur tragedy or not, it was, for me in 1995 (along with the Toronto Raptors t-shirt; see photo) one of the coolest dinosaur things I got my hands on. 

The story centered around a Utahraptor that lost her mate, found and joined her sister, was wooed, and, through many more trials and tribulations founds a large and successful pack of Utahraptors (and yes I skipped a lot of storyline). Some of the story may have even inspired later Jurassic World scenes, or are so highly similar that they could be accused of being questionable (we are all looking at you death of "Indominus rex" scene). The point is that this was one of the first books, post-Jurassic Park, that I really enjoyed that was about dinosaurs and it reignited my interest in the animals. Utahraptor, specifically, reignited my want to read more about dinosaurs. Jurassic Park had done a good job of that as well, but I have always been an imaginative person, and seeing that it was okay to speculate and drive a narrative like this resonated with and inspired me in a way that scientific literature never did and still does not. Of course scientific literature is extremely important and I value it. I do not find inspiration in it the way I do fiction though. Of course I have not read it in years and so I cannot say how I would feel about it today. Nor would I say that I recommend it, because I do not know how my adult self would view it. However, 13 year old me thinks it was a wonderful book and that it is worth reading. Maybe it has been long enough that I do not want to destroy the good memory of it, like when you watch a cartoon from your childhood and wonder what made you think that that show was so great. But I cannot say that because I do not know.