What’s up with your crazy-ass hands, Utahraptor?

Utahraptor is a “giant” dromaeosaurid from Utah, described by Kirkland et al. (1993). Famously, its existence was part of the reason that the people making Jurassic Park felt at liberty to make their “Velociraptor” individuals not only much bigger than the turkey-sized Velociraptor proper, but also than than sheep-sized Deinonychus.

Here’s a mounted skeleton, right in the state of Utah — specifically, at the Prehistoric Museum in Price, which you will recall is currently exhibiting the Concrete Diplodocus.

(Photo from the Prehistoric Museum’s own site.)

I didn’t register the skeleton back when Matt and I visited in 2016. Maybe it wasn’t even up back then, or maybe we were too distracted by the Camarasaurus pit. But anyway, when I saw the photo above, my immediate thought was Holy Heck What’s Up With Your Hands??! It looks more like a giant Scansoriopteryx.

So for a few days, I thought, well, that’s just what Utahraptor hands are like, and the word has somehow failed to register how morally wrong that is. But then I saw this photo of another Utahraptor mount, this in from the BYU Museum of Palaeontology (from Wikipedia):

(Yes, Matt and I were also at the BYU Museum in 2016, and Matt has been there on numerous other occasions. Somehow we never noticed the stinkin’ theropod.)

And this one has perfectly cromulent hands.

So what’s the deal here? Is the Price mount Just Plain Wrong?

References

• Kirkland, James I., Robert Gaston and Donald Burge. 1993. A large Dromaeosaur (Theropoda) from the Lower Cretaceous of Eastern Utah. Hunteria 2(10), 16 pages.