Deinonychus
by Lyman P.
The Deinonychus is a 10-foot long, 5-foot tall, 150-175 pound maniraptor that rips open the body of larger prey with claws. The Deinonychus was one of the first dinosaurs to evolve the bird flapping movements while it was in its jump. Deinonychus is a Greek word. Deinos means terrible and onychus means claw, referring to the lethal claw on its feet. It used the claws to rip down a larger prey’s chest after hooking its front claws onto the body.
In the very beginning there were vertebrates, which were animals with backbones and skulls. Then there were Gnathostomes, which were animals that evolved jaws. The next thousand years, animals evolved four limbs. They were the tetrapods. Then the traits of having watertight eggs were animals called amniotes. The animals evolved pair of openings behind the eyes, which were the Sauropsids. Then came the famous dinosaurs, which evolved a hole in the hip pocket. After that, Saurischian dinosaurs evolved to have grasping hands. Then animals evolved a three-toed foot. They were the Theropods. After that, came the maniraptors, which had the most advanced trait. That trait was that they had a pulley-shaped wrist bone. The dinosaurs that branch off from that are the Archaeopteryx, Deinonychus, and the seagull. My animal has all of these traits to become what it was before the meteor, of course! My animal would have probably evolved multiple times if the meteor hadn’t come down and wiped out all of the big dinosaurs. My animal probably would have become a modern day bird or something close to that.
My animal is most closely related to the Archaeopteryx, and the seagull, which are feathered birds. These dinosaurs are maniraptors, which is their most advanced trait. Both of the dinosaurs have an S-shaped neck. The front limbs of the dinosaurs look the same if you looked at them. Also, the backbones are both parallel to the ground. Another similarity is that they both have three primary toes on their hind feet. There are differences between the two. The Deinonychus hunts in packs on land on what is now, Montana, Utah, Wyoming and Oklahoma. Also, the Deinonychus was around in the Early Cretaceous, which was about 100-115 million years ago. The Archaeopteryx was around in the late Jurassic period, which was around 150 million years ago. It used to be around in modern day, Germany. This animal is about 1.5 feet long, and most importantly it had feathers. First, you have to follow the branch from your animal to the most advanced trait, which is the node. Then you look at the animals branching off of the node. That is the animal(s) that is most closely related. That is one way you can use the cladogram to find the animal’s closest ancestors and the advanced and primitive traits of them to. You can see how they evolved from the very beginning!
Last updated April 7, 2007.