Jurassic Park Velociraptor Skeleton

Very cool idea!

Riceball said:

Basically, the majority of theropods (esp. the carnivorous ones) had their hands in clapping position as opposed to the kangaroo pose seen in the movies.

One thing that I would do before you start your sculting is to consult as many books an images of actual fossil skeletons that you can, this will help you get a better feel for what actual fossils look like. They're going to be rough and, in some cases, cracked so by making yours like that will help add to the realism. Another thing is that 100% complete skeletons are seldomly, if ever, found, even the most complete specimen will be missing various bones here and there so don't worry about having to make every single bone. As a general rule, the smaller the bone the more likely it is to be missing, commonly missing bones are vertebrae (esp along the tail), fingers, toes, and (if the animal has them) belly ribs.

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thanks for the advice, I have been filling a folder with material to work from

I still plan to make most bones, but for aesthetic reasons I think i will omit the belly ribs and Sclerotic ring

mrcarkeys42 said:

thanks for the advice, I have been filling a folder with material to work from

I still plan to make most bones, but for aesthetic reasons I think i will omit the belly ribs and Sclerotic ring

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Glad to be of help, paleontology is big interest of mine so naturally your project holds a lot of interest for me, even if I'm much more of a tryannosaur fan than a dromaesaur. Regardless, I think your idea of omitting the belly ribs and the sclerotic ring aren't too bad, both of those aren't always found with a skeleton so their omission wouldn't be too odd. Truthfully, you could omit 90% of the bones and still be scientifically accurate since what see in that scene would represent a particularly well preserved and complete skeleton and it's not unheard of for paleontologists to identify entire new genera based on little more than teeth or a few small skull fragments.

One more thing to keep in mind for your project, even though skulls look like just a couple of pieces of bone they're really comprised of many separate bones, although many are fused together. So when making your skull, you might want to try to keep that in mind and when you're sculpting pay attention to the lines that represent where the different pieces of the skull come together. Not that I suggest you sculpt each bone separately but definitely model in those lines, it will help to make your skeleton look that much more authentic and real.

You can find various 3D scans of actual dinosaurs on various sites such as thingiverse and sketchfab, where you can either download the model to view or view on the on-site viewer to give you an idea of dimensions and shapes.

For example this one, where you can even see how all those millions of years in the ground has distorted the original skull shape: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:10447