Velociraptor

Few dinosaurs have suffered more from popular misrepresentation than Velociraptor. The 1993 Jurassic Park raptors were 1.8 meters tall at the hip, smooth-skinned, and hunted in organized packs. The real animal was 0.5 meters tall at the hip, feathered, almost certainly a solitary hunter, and its closest non-cinematic analog is not a wolf — it's a large bird of prey.

In 2007, Alan Turner and colleagues described quill knobs on the ulna of a Velociraptor mongoliensis specimen (IGM 100/981) — raised bumps on the forearm bone where the secondary feathers of the wing attach in modern birds. This was definitive physical evidence that Velociraptor bore true feathers, not the proto-filaments seen in some other dinosaurs. The irony: Velociraptor's feathers weren't for flight (its arms were too short) — they were probably used for display, brooding eggs, or thermoregulation.

The sickle claw function has been substantially revised. Early interpretations imagined it slashing open prey like a blade. Manning et al. (2006) used computerized biomechanical testing to show the claw was poorly suited for that role — the curvature and cross-section would have caused it to skid off prey surfaces rather than cut. Instead, the claw may have functioned for climbing or, more likely, for gripping prey while the animal held on — similar to how raptors (birds) pin prey with their talons and use body weight to subdue it.