Velociraptor Skeleton: Labeled Diagrams and Rotatable 3D Model

A Velociraptor skeleton is a small, lightly built theropod dinosaur skeleton about 1.5 to 2 m long, of which more than half is tail. It has a long, low skull with about 26 to 30 serrated teeth on each side, an S-curved neck, a short, deep rib cage with a wishbone and belly ribs, long arms with three clawed fingers, a hip with a backward-pointing pubis, and long legs that stood on two toes while a third toe held the famous sickle claw off the ground.

The reference species here is Velociraptor mongoliensis, named by Henry Fairfield Osborn in 1924 from a crushed skull and hand claw (AMNH 6515) found in 1923 at the Flaming Cliffs (Bayn Dzak) in Mongolia. It lived in the desert dunes of the Djadokhta Formation in the Campanian stage of the Late Cretaceous, about 75 to 71 million years ago. A second species, V. osmolskae, was named in 2008 from two upper jaws and a lacrimal found at Bayan Mandahu in Inner Mongolia, China; it differs mainly in the shape of the openings in the maxilla. (Turner, Makovicky & Norell (2012): dromaeosaurid systematics, Bulletin of the AMNH 371.)

Directions: anterior means towards the snout, posterior towards the tail tip, dorsal towards the back and ventral towards the belly. Specimens are cited by their museum numbers; IGM, GIN and MPC-D are successive prefixes for the same Mongolian collection.

The labeled Velociraptor skeleton below shows the animal from the right side, with every bone a school or museum worksheet usually asks for. The same labels are available in the 3D viewer above: switch on "All labels" or click any bone.

The bones most often asked for on a Velociraptor skeleton are:

• Maxilla: The main tooth-bearing bone of the upper jaw, with eleven teeth and the antorbital and maxillary openings.
• Dentary: The long, shallow tooth-bearing bone at the front of the lower jaw.
• Cervical vertebrae: About ten neck vertebrae arranged in an S-curve.
• Furcula: The boomerang-shaped wishbone formed by the fused collarbones.
• Scapula: A long, strap-like shoulder blade lying almost horizontally high on the rib cage.
• Humerus: The upper arm bone, with a large crest for the chest muscles.
• Ulna: The thicker, bowed forearm bone, where the secondary wing feathers attached.
• Semilunate carpal: A half-moon-shaped wrist bone over the first two metacarpals.
• Hand claws: Three sharp, strongly curved, side-to-side flattened finger claws; the thumb claw is the largest.
• Dorsal ribs: Thirteen pairs of mostly double-headed ribs forming a deep, narrow rib cage.
• Gastralia: A basket of thin, overlapping belly ribs in the abdominal wall.
• Ilium: The long, low upper hip bone fused to the sacrum.
• Pubis: The long front-lower hip bone, rotated backward (opisthopubic) as in birds.
• Ischium: The short, plate-like rear-lower hip bone with a pointed obturator process.
• Femur: The thigh bone, bowed forward, about 24 cm long in a large specimen.
• Tibia: The shin bone, slightly longer than the femur, with a cnemial crest at the knee.
• Metatarsals: Long upper foot bones: metatarsal III is longest, II shortest of the main three, and V a splint.
• Sickle claw: The enlarged, strongly curved claw on toe II, over 6.5 cm along its outer curve.
• Prezygapophyseal rods: Long bony rods projecting forward from each tail vertebra over its neighbours, stiffening the tail.

A Velociraptor skull is long, low and narrow, up to about 23 cm long, with a snout that makes up 60% of its length and is only about a third as wide as the back of the skull. Barsbold and Osmólska measured the skull of the Fighting Dinosaurs specimen (GIN 100/25) at 230 mm, its lower jaw at 210 mm, and the deepest part of the skull at just 66 mm. (Barsbold & Osmólska (1999): the skull of Velociraptor, Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 44.)

The side of the skull is a frame of bones around large openings. The large, oval external naris (nostril) sits near the tip. Behind it, the antorbital fenestra fills more than half of a long, shallow antorbital fossa, with a much smaller maxillary fenestra in front of it; these openings held air sinuses. The orbit is almost circular and held a ring of bony plates, the sclerotic ring. Behind the eye are the tall, narrow infratemporal fenestra on the side and an almost round supratemporal fenestra on the roof, which anchored the jaw muscles. Unusually, Velociraptor has no separate prefrontal bone; the lacrimal may include it. (Barsbold & Osmólska (1999): the skull of Velociraptor, Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 44.)

The snout of many Velociraptor skulls looks slightly dished or upturned. Barsbold and Osmólska treated this "depressed nasal" as a real feature, but Turner, Makovicky and Norell point out that the nasals are wider at the front, so side-to-side crushing, as in the holotype and Fighting Dinosaurs skulls, produces an exaggerated upturned look. The model and diagram keep only a gentle dip. (Turner, Makovicky & Norell (2012): dromaeosaurid systematics, Bulletin of the AMNH 371.)

Teeth. Each side of the upper jaw has 4 premaxillary and 11 maxillary teeth, and each dentary has 14 or 15, so a Velociraptor had roughly 26 to 30 teeth per side and 52 to 60 in all. The teeth are blade-like, curved backwards and serrated, with larger serrations (denticles) on the back edge than the front. Shed teeth from the type locality are mostly about 10 mm long. The lower jaw is very shallow, its depth only one-eighth to one-seventh of its length. (Barsbold & Osmólska (1999): the skull of Velociraptor, Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 44.)

A CT study of the braincase and inner ear found that Velociraptor could hear a wide, high range of frequencies (about 2,368 to 3,965 Hz) and had the balance organs of an agile animal, consistent with an active predator that also scavenged. (King et al. (2020): endocranium and trophic ecology of Velociraptor, Journal of Anatomy.)

A real Velociraptor skeleton is about the length of an adult human's height but only knee-high at the hip. Adults were about 1.5 to 2.07 m long, about 0.5 m high at the hips and weighed roughly 14 to 20 kg; the skull was up to about 23 cm long. The Natural History Museum in London describes it as about the size of a Thanksgiving turkey, which is a fair description of its body without the tail. (Wikipedia: Velociraptor (specimen history and size estimates, with primary citations).) (Natural History Museum, London: Velociraptor facts.)

Bone measurements from Norell and Makovicky (1999) and Barsbold and Osmólska (1999). The keratin sheath that covered each claw in life would have made the claws longer than their bony cores. (Norell & Makovicky (1999): newly collected specimens of Velociraptor mongoliensis, American Museum Novitates 3282.)

Velociraptor is one of the best-known dromaeosaurids, known from at least nine skeletons of varying completeness according to Turner, Makovicky and Norell (2012); other summaries say more than a dozen. The numbers differ because some finds are fragments or undescribed, and some specimens once called Velociraptor have since been given other names (for example MPC-D 100/980, named Shri devi in 2021). (Turner, Makovicky & Norell (2012): dromaeosaurid systematics, Bulletin of the AMNH 371.) (Wikipedia: Velociraptor (specimen history and size estimates, with primary citations).)

Specimen details from Norell and Makovicky (1997, 1999), Barsbold and Osmólska (1999) and Turner et al. (2012). MAS-AMNH is the joint Mongolian Academy of Sciences and American Museum of Natural History expedition of the 1990s. IGM 100/982 has since been suggested to represent a separate species; that idea is still being tested. (Norell & Makovicky (1999): newly collected specimens of Velociraptor mongoliensis, American Museum Novitates 3282.)

The most complete Velociraptor skeleton is the Velociraptor of the Fighting Dinosaurs (MPC-D 100/25). Barsbold and Osmólska describe it as complete and articulated, with the skull, closed jaws and the whole postcranial skeleton, although the snout and lower jaw are slightly crushed. A complete skeleton of a juvenile, GIN 100/2000, is the other full skeleton. (Barsbold & Osmólska (1999): the skull of Velociraptor, Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 44.)

For many details, though, scientists rely on the three-dimensional partial skeletons collected in the 1990s. Norell and Makovicky called them the largest assemblage of articulated dromaeosaurid postcrania then described. IGM 100/982 is preserved in near-perfect articulation from skull to the base of the tail, although scavengers removed the ends of many long bones. No single fossil preserves every bone undamaged, so a "full Velociraptor skeleton" in a museum, or this 3D model, is a composite of several specimens. (Norell & Makovicky (1999): newly collected specimens of Velociraptor mongoliensis, American Museum Novitates 3282.)

The Velociraptor skeletons and animals in the Jurassic Park films are not real Velociraptor. In 1988 the palaeoartist Gregory Paul placed the much larger North American Deinonychus antirrhopus in the genus Velociraptor, as V. antirrhopus. Michael Crichton, who had discussed the animals with Deinonychus expert John Ostrom, kept the name Velociraptor for his novel, and the film designers gave their raptors the proportions and snout of a large Deinonychus. (Wikipedia: Deinonychus (size, Paul 1988 and Jurassic Park).) Later work, including Barsbold and Osmólska's skull study, keeps Deinonychus and Velociraptor as separate genera. (Barsbold & Osmólska (1999): the skull of Velociraptor, Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 44.)

The Natural History Museum notes that there is no evidence for the films' claw-tapping behaviour and that trackways show, at most, groups moving together rather than cooperative hunting. Film references here are cultural context only; the skeleton on this page is built from the fossils. (Natural History Museum, London: Velociraptor facts.)

A bird skeleton and a Velociraptor skeleton are similar because birds are living theropod dinosaurs, and dromaeosaurids such as Velociraptor are among their closest extinct relatives. The UC Museum of Paleontology lists more than twenty skeletal features birds share with maniraptoran dinosaurs, including a furcula formed by fused collarbones, hollow, thin-walled bones, a flexible wrist with a semilunate carpal, a pubis rotated backwards, long arms, an S-shaped neck and long metatarsals. (UC Museum of Paleontology: birds as avian dinosaurs.)

Emu skeleton vs Velociraptor. An emu is a much bigger animal, standing 1.6 to 1.9 m tall, with greatly reduced wings and three forward-facing toes and no hind toe. Like Velociraptor it walks on its toes on long legs and has a backward-pointing pubis and an S-curved neck. The differences show what birds changed: as in all birds, the emu's foot bones are fused into one tarsometatarsus, its tail is short and its jaws are a toothless beak, and its arms have shrunk instead of carrying clawed hands. Like other flightless ratites it has a flat breastbone with no keel, closer to Velociraptor's keel-less plates than to a flying bird's. Velociraptor walked on two toes, holding toe II off the ground, while the emu walks on all three. (Australian Museum: emu.)

For the full bird side of the comparison, see the 3D bird skeleton page, which labels the keel, carpometacarpus, pygostyle and tarsometatarsus of a pigeon.

Velociraptor had feathers, and the evidence is in its skeleton. In 2007 Alan Turner, Peter Makovicky and Mark Norell described a forearm bone (ulna IGM 100/981) with a row of quill knobs, the small bumps where the ligaments of large wing feathers anchor to the bone in living birds. Six knobs are preserved, and their spacing suggests about fourteen secondary feathers. The authors stress that this is a larger-bodied and clearly flightless animal. (Turner, Makovicky & Norell (2007): feather quill knobs in Velociraptor, Science 317.)

That ulna was later renumbered IGM 100/3503, and some authors have questioned whether it belongs to Velociraptor at all. Even so, Velociraptor's close relatives, such as Microraptor and Zhenyuanlong, are preserved with feathers, so a feathered Velociraptor is the mainstream view. No feathers, skin or colour have been preserved with a Velociraptor fossil. (Wikipedia: Velociraptor (specimen history and size estimates, with primary citations).)

In the 3D model, slide the Feathers control up to see a deliberately conservative outline: a short coat over the head, neck, body, arms and thighs, a small wing of vaned feathers along the ulna and second finger, and a frond of feathers along the end of the tail. The snout and the lower feet are left bare, the colour is a neutral brown, and feather lengths are guesses, so treat it as a silhouette rather than a portrait.

Velociraptor could not fly. Its arms were too short and its wing too small for flight or gliding. The Natural History Museum lists display, warmth and brooding eggs as possible uses of the feathers, and the 'raptor prey restraint' model adds flapping to stay balanced on top of struggling prey. (Natural History Museum, London: Velociraptor facts.)

The sickle claw is the enlarged, strongly curved claw on the second toe of each foot, more than 6.5 cm along its outer curve in bone and longer with its keratin sheath. Specialised joints in the toe, including a deep, rounded joint at the end of its second phalanx, let Velociraptor swing the claw up and back, so it was carried clear of the ground while the animal walked on toes III and IV. Norell and Makovicky describe the claw as strongly recurved, with a tall, narrow cross-section and a large flexor tubercle for the tendon that pulled it down. (Norell & Makovicky (1997): important features of the dromaeosaur skeleton, American Museum Novitates 3215.)

Manning and colleagues concluded that the claw "did not function as a slashing weapon, but may have acted as an aid to prey capture". Fowler and colleagues found that the foot of Deinonychus groups with those of hawks and eagles in its proportions, and argued that dromaeosaurids pinned prey and began eating it alive, flapping their feathered arms for balance. (Manning et al. (2006): dinosaur killer claws or climbing crampons?, Biology Letters.) (Fowler et al. (2011): predatory ecology of Deinonychus and the origin of flapping, PLoS ONE.)

Velociraptor had fourteen claws: three on each hand and four on each foot, including the two sickle claws. The hand claws are sharp, narrow, side-to-side flattened and strongly curved; the claw of digit I is the largest of the three and the claw of digit III the smallest. The famous sickle claw is on the foot, not the hand. The holotype AMNH 6515 includes a hand claw, from digit III, with its skull. (Norell & Makovicky (1999): newly collected specimens of Velociraptor mongoliensis, American Museum Novitates 3282.)

• Hand claws: Three sharp, strongly curved, side-to-side flattened finger claws; the thumb claw is the largest.
• Sickle claw: The enlarged, strongly curved claw on toe II, over 6.5 cm along its outer curve.
• Hallux: The small first toe, high on the inside of the foot and not reversed.
• Toe III: The middle, longest weight-bearing toe.
• Toe IV: The outer weight-bearing toe, nearly as long as toe III.

The Fighting Dinosaurs is a single block of sandstone holding a complete Velociraptor locked with a Protoceratops andrewsi, the sheep-sized horned dinosaur that is the most common large animal of the Djadokhta Formation. It was found on 3 August 1971 by a Polish-Mongolian expedition at Tugrikin Shire in the Gobi Desert. The Velociraptor is catalogued as MPC-D 100/25 (formerly GIN or IGM 100/25) and the Protoceratops as MPC-D 100/512. It is considered a national treasure of Mongolia. (Wikipedia: Fighting Dinosaurs (discovery and interpretations, with primary citations).)

One of the Velociraptor's arms is clamped in the Protoceratops's beak (the right hand, in Carpenter's description), and one foot is pressed against the Protoceratops's neck with the sickle claw at its throat. Both animals were buried very quickly, probably by a collapsing sand dune or a sandstorm, which explains why they are preserved in place. (Natural History Museum, London: Velociraptor facts.)

Scientists have read the scene in several ways. Kenneth Carpenter (1998) interpreted throat wounds from the claws that made the Protoceratops bleed to death while it held on to the predator's arm. Others proposed burial in a sandstorm mid-fight, or that the Velociraptor was scavenging. Barsbold (2016) noted that parts of the Protoceratops were missing or displaced, probably by scavengers after burial. None of these readings is settled, but the specimen is direct evidence that Velociraptor attacked prey about its own size. (Wikipedia: Fighting Dinosaurs (discovery and interpretations, with primary citations).)

Velociraptor also ate dead animals. Hone and colleagues described Velociraptor teeth next to tooth-marked Protoceratops bones (2010), and a Velociraptor skeleton (MPC-D 100/54) with a pterosaur bone in its gut (2012). The Natural History Museum notes that the pterosaur had a wingspan of around 3 m, larger than the Velociraptor, so it was more likely scavenged than killed. (Wikipedia: Velociraptor (specimen history and size estimates, with primary citations).)

Velociraptor had long arms for a theropod, ending in large three-fingered hands. The shoulder blade (scapula) lies almost horizontally, high on the side of the rib cage, more like a bird's than in other non-avian theropods, and the L-shaped coracoid braces the shoulder against the paired sternal plates. A V-shaped furcula bridges the two shoulders in front. (Norell & Makovicky (1999): newly collected specimens of Velociraptor mongoliensis, American Museum Novitates 3282.)

The wrist has a half-moon-shaped semilunate carpal over the first two metacarpals. Its curved surface lets the hand fold sideways against the forearm, the same motion a bird uses to fold its wing. The hand has the theropod finger formula 2-3-4: digit I has two bones including the claw, digit II three, digit III four. Metacarpal II is the longest palm bone (about 51 mm in IGM 100/982) and finger II the longest finger. (Norell & Makovicky (1999): newly collected specimens of Velociraptor mongoliensis, American Museum Novitates 3282.)

No pronation. Velociraptor could not turn its palms to face the ground. In dromaeosaurids the radius is held firmly against the ulna and cannot roll around it, so the palms faced inward, towards each other, as if about to clap. Senter's range-of-motion study of its close relatives Deinonychus and Bambiraptor found the elbow could flex strongly but not straighten fully, and that bending the wrist back forced the palms to turn further upward (supination), never palm-down. (Senter (2006): forelimb function in Deinonychus and Bambiraptor, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.)

• Scapula: A long, strap-like shoulder blade lying almost horizontally high on the rib cage.
• Coracoid: The L-shaped bone below the scapula, fused to it and jointed to the sternal plates.
• Humerus: The upper arm bone, with a large crest for the chest muscles.
• Radius: The thinner of the two forearm bones.
• Ulna: The thicker, bowed forearm bone, where the secondary wing feathers attached.
• Quill knobs: A row of small bumps on the back of the ulna where the quills of wing feathers were tied by ligaments.
• Semilunate carpal: A half-moon-shaped wrist bone over the first two metacarpals.
• Metacarpals: Three palm bones; metacarpal II is the longest and metacarpal I short and robust.
• Fingers: Three fingers with the theropod phalangeal formula 2-3-4; finger II is the longest.

The appendicular skeleton of Velociraptor is its limbs and limb girdles: the shoulder girdle and arms, and the pelvis and legs. The pelvis has three bones on each side that meet at an open hip socket (acetabulum), the hallmark of dinosaurs. The ilium is long and low, about 13 to 15 cm, with a sinuous upper edge and a reduced front shelf. The ischium is a short plate with a pointed obturator process. (Norell & Makovicky (1999): newly collected specimens of Velociraptor mongoliensis, American Museum Novitates 3282.)

The most bird-like feature is the pubis. In most dinosaurs it points forward and down; in Velociraptor it is swung backwards (opisthopubic). Norell and Makovicky measured an angle of 155° between the pubis and the long axis of the ilium in IGM 100/985, more backward than had been reconstructed for Deinonychus. The two pubes join at the bottom in an expanded pubic boot. (Norell & Makovicky (1997): important features of the dromaeosaur skeleton, American Museum Novitates 3215.)

The leg is built for speed. The femur (238 mm in IGM 100/986) is bowed forwards and is slightly shorter than the tibia (255 mm). The thin fibula runs down the outer side of the tibia. The astragalus and calcaneum are fused together and cap the tibia, with a tall ascending process up its front. Below them the long metatarsals hold the ankle well off the ground; metatarsal III is the longest, II the shortest of the main three, IV nearly as long as III, and V a thin splint. The small first toe (hallux) sits high on the inside and, unlike a perching bird's, is not reversed. (Norell & Makovicky (1999): newly collected specimens of Velociraptor mongoliensis, American Museum Novitates 3282.)

• Ilium: The long, low upper hip bone fused to the sacrum.
• Pubis: The long front-lower hip bone, rotated backward (opisthopubic) as in birds.
• Pubic boot: The expanded foot-like end of the fused pubes.
• Ischium: The short, plate-like rear-lower hip bone with a pointed obturator process.
• Acetabulum: The open hip socket where ilium, pubis and ischium meet.
• Femur: The thigh bone, bowed forward, about 24 cm long in a large specimen.
• Tibia: The shin bone, slightly longer than the femur, with a cnemial crest at the knee.
• Fibula: The very thin bone along the outer side of the tibia.
• Astragalus & calcaneum: The two upper ankle bones, fused to each other and capping the tibia, with a tall ascending process.
• Metatarsals: Long upper foot bones: metatarsal III is longest, II shortest of the main three, and V a splint.

The Velociraptor backbone has four regions: a long, S-curved neck of about ten cervical vertebrae, thirteen dorsal (back) vertebrae carrying the ribs, a sacrum of five or six fused vertebrae locked between the hip bones, and a long tail. Norell and Makovicky number the dorsals from 1 to 13 in their measurements, and they describe the dorsal centra as pneumatic, with a honeycombed inside and openings where air sacs entered the bone, as in birds. (Norell & Makovicky (1999): newly collected specimens of Velociraptor mongoliensis, American Museum Novitates 3282.)

The sacrum grows with age. The partial skeleton IGM 100/985 has five sacral vertebrae, but in the larger IGM 100/986 the first tail vertebra has fused to the fifth sacral, giving six. The neural spines of the first five sacrals fuse into a continuous bony plate along the top of the hips. (Norell & Makovicky (1999): newly collected specimens of Velociraptor mongoliensis, American Museum Novitates 3282.)

The tail is the signature of the dromaeosaurid skeleton. IGM 100/986 preserves its first 26 tail vertebrae in a row; the total is unknown, and for comparison Ostrom estimated 36 to 40 in Deinonychus. From about the tenth tail vertebra backwards, each vertebra sends a pair of very long, thin rods (elongated prezygapophyses) forward over the vertebrae in front, and the chevrons underneath develop long forward and backward rods too. Together these bundles turn the back two-thirds of the tail into a stiff, light rod that worked as a counterbalance and a dynamic stabiliser. (Norell & Makovicky (1999): newly collected specimens of Velociraptor mongoliensis, American Museum Novitates 3282.)

Stiff does not mean rigid. One IGM 100/986 tail is preserved curved sideways without disturbing the rods, which suggests that the tail could still swing a good deal from side to side. The base of the tail stayed flexible, and it anchored the large caudofemoralis muscle that pulled each thigh backwards. (Norell & Makovicky (1999): newly collected specimens of Velociraptor mongoliensis, American Museum Novitates 3282.)

The rib cage is deep and narrow. The dorsal ribs are mostly double-headed and flat; the last is small and single-headed. Behind the sternum the belly was supported by gastralia: IGM 100/985 preserves twelve pairs, each pair made of two rods per side that overlap in a zigzag along the midline and could slide against each other, which may have helped breathing. (Norell & Makovicky (1997): important features of the dromaeosaur skeleton, American Museum Novitates 3215.)

Uncinate processes, the small backward-pointing spurs that brace the ribs of most living birds, have been reported in Velociraptor. Norell and Makovicky confirmed them on the Fighting Dinosaurs specimen in Ulaanbaatar, although they were not found in the skeletons collected by the American Museum expeditions. Codd and colleagues argued that, together with the sternum and gastralia, they gave maniraptoran dinosaurs bird-like breathing mechanics. (Codd et al. (2008): avian-like breathing mechanics in maniraptoran dinosaurs, Proc. R. Soc. B.)

There is no published total bone count for Velociraptor, and this page does not invent one. Skulls are often crushed, the tip of the tail has never been found in sequence, and small bones such as gastralia, sclerotic plates and wrist bones are rarely all preserved. What can be stated from the fossils is a count by region:

For comparison, an adult human has about 206 bones. A Velociraptor certainly had more, mainly because of its long tail, gastralia and the many separate skull bones, but the exact number is not known.

Most real Velociraptor fossils are kept in Mongolian collections, because almost all specimens come from the Gobi Desert. The Fighting Dinosaurs are stored at the Mongolian Paleontological Center in Ulaanbaatar; they travelled to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York for the 2000 exhibition "Fighting Dinosaurs: New Discoveries from Mongolia". The holotype skull AMNH 6515 is in the AMNH collection, collected in 1923 by the Central Asiatic Expeditions. The 1990s skeletons are catalogued in the Mongolian Academy of Sciences collection (IGM / MPC-D), and the V. osmolskae type is catalogued in Inner Mongolia, China. (Wikipedia: Fighting Dinosaurs (discovery and interpretations, with primary citations).)

What most museum visitors see are casts: resin or plaster copies of real bones, often combined from several specimens and mounted as a full skeleton. A cast of the Fighting Dinosaurs, for example, has been displayed at the Nagoya City Science Museum in Japan. Displays change, so check a museum's current exhibits before visiting to see a specific specimen. (Wikipedia: Fighting Dinosaurs (discovery and interpretations, with primary citations).)

Can you buy a real Velociraptor skeleton, and what is one worth? A real one is not legally for sale. Mongolian law since 1924 has declared dinosaur fossils property of the state and made their export a crime. In 2013, for example, a Tarbosaurus skeleton that had been smuggled out of Mongolia and auctioned in the United States was forfeited by a U.S. court and returned to Mongolia. The "Velociraptor skeletons" offered for sale, with prices that depend on size and finish, are casts and replicas, not fossils; this page does not recommend any vendor. (U.S. Attorney, S.D.N.Y. (2013): Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton returned to Mongolia.)

The viewer at the top of this page is a rotatable Velociraptor skeleton 3D model. Drag to rotate, scroll or pinch to zoom, and click any bone to highlight it and read its name, position and function. The panel lists every structure by system; hide a system (for example the ribs) to see the bones behind it. "All labels" adds leader-line labels for printing or revision, and the Feathers slider fades in the reconstructed feather outline.

The model is built at a scale of 1 unit to 25 cm from published bone measurements: the femur, tibia, metatarsals, ilium, pubis, ischium and hand bones follow IGM 100/982, 100/985 and 100/986, and the skull follows GIN 100/25. It shows the animal standing with its sickle claws raised, its arms folded and its palms facing inward. It is a teaching model, not a scan of a single fossil.

Test yourself on this unlabeled Velociraptor skeleton diagram. Write the name of each numbered bone, then check your answers in the key below. You can also use the 3D model: hide the labels, click a bone and say its name before you read it.

Extra questions:

• Which bone shows that Velociraptor had wing feathers? (The ulna, with its quill knobs.)
• Which pelvic bone points backward, as in birds? (The pubis.)
• On which toes did Velociraptor walk? (Toes III and IV; toe II was held up.)
• Which wrist bone lets the hand fold sideways? (The semilunate carpal.)

Every bone and opening in the 3D model, grouped by system. Click any name in the viewer's list to jump to it in 3D.