"In her own brain the raptor identifies herself with the symbols she learned as a chick: me... raptor... red. We can call her Raptor Red, because that's how she labels herself in her own mental imagery."
Raptor Red is the story of a young female Utahraptor by paleontologist Robert T. Bakker, who served as one of the fact-checkers for the film version of Jurassic Park. It was written as a sort of companion novel to his non-fiction book The Dinosaur Heresies, in which he exposed his then-revolutionary ideas about dinosaurs being a little more active and birdlike than the popular imagination's vision of them as big, stupid lizards. It's written as a kind of nature documentary that allows some insight into the animals' thoughts.
Raptor Red and her kin may or may not be sapient, but they definitely aren't human; they're much more olfactory creatures, and communicate in birdlike calls and gestures. Even Raptor Red's "name" is a Translation Convention - she attaches the concepts of "raptor" and "red" (for her species' red snout-markings, as opposed to the yellow snouts of a rival Utahraptor species) to her concept of "myself". The other major characters are either 'named' in relation to Raptor Red or by their species, like with the ancient white dactyl who considers Raptor Red's pack as the moving centre of his territory.
The novel follows an eventful year in Raptor Red's life; the times are changing (the book takes place around the Jurassic/Cretaceous boundary) and various dinosaurs are on the move, among them Raptor Red and her mate, who have come to what will one day be Utah from what will one day be Asia via land bridge. He dies in a hunting accident in the first chapter; not long after, Raptor Red reunites with her sister and finds that her sister has three chicks. Since the chicks are "half of half of me", Raptor Red forms a two-raptor pack with her sister to help raise the offspring. The ensuing adventures include famine, flood, a dashing young male attempting to court Raptor Red over her sister's protests, menacing Acrocanthosaurs, a very nasty run-in with a whip-tailed sauropod, and lots and lots of random paleontology.
This work provides examples of the following tropes:
- Accidental Hero: When the Aegialodon gobbles up a swarm of assassin bugs, he is only trying to fulfill his hunger, but he also saves the Utahraptor from a fatal disease that would have been transmitted by the bugs.
- Always a Bigger Fish: Raptor Red exploits this by leading an Acrocanthosaurus into the jaws of a Kronosaurus.
- Anachronism Stew: Utahraptor lived several million years before nearly all the other animals which are depicted. The ending is especially egregious, because it shows the Acrocanthosaurus being decimated by a plague, which allows the Utahraptor to dominate, when in reality Acrocanthosaurus is only known to have lived well after the last Utahraptor, so it should've been the other way around. note
- Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: Averted by the Utahraptor. Raptor Red's consort would kill Raptor Red's sister's chicks if it weren't for the fact that Raptor Red would never let him. That, and the fact that either Raptor Red or Raptor Red's sister would probably kill him afterward. Nothing ever actually happens, but there are several close shaves.
- Artistic License – Paleontology: Mostly averted, since the author actually is a paleontologist. If anyone's crying, it's probably because they don't agree with Bakker's views or because
Science Has Marched On - the book came out in 1995, and was pretty accurate up to that year.- There was one flaw, but its only one that someone who really pays attention to paleontology would notice. Utahraptor was from the Barremian stages of the Early Cretaceous. Acrocanthosaurus was from the Aptian and Albian stages of the Early Cretaceous. While most people (with the exception of some incredibly pedant paleontologists) will allow some overlap of dinosaur taxa from neighboring stages due to the patchiness of the fossil record, Acrocanthosaurus rose to prominence after Utahraptor. Thereby making the ending where the Acros were nearly wiped out by plague allowing Utahraptor to dominate the continent temporally inconsistent. If anything, Utahraptor would have been the one to go first. Later studies have made this discrepancy even greater because Utahraptor's chronological range has been pushed back ten million years.
- One of the animals shown coexisting with Utahraptor is a diplodocid. At the time, diplodocids were only known from the Jurassic Period, which was 25 million years ago by the time of the novel's setting, although the story handwaves it as being an endangered species by this point. This has partly been vindicated, since an Early Cretaceous diplodocid was described in 2014, known as Leinkupal, however it lived in South America about 136 million years instead of North America 120 million years ago.
- Ammonites were probably filter feeders rather than having biting jaws like other cephalopods.
- In one of the most egregious examples in the book, Gastonia is depicted as having an ankylosaur-style club tail. Even at the time the book was written it was known that Gastonia was part of the Nodosaurid family and did not have a club at the end of its tail.
- Attack! Attack! Attack!: Raptor Red is fairly calm and methodical, but her sister is best described as manic and slightly nuts, especially when her chicks are in danger. Or even when she just thinks the chicks are in danger. This eventually proves to be her downfall.
- Babies Ever After: At the end of it all, Raptor Red herself, her niece, and the white pterosaur all have offspring. For Raptor Red, it's because she finally became mated to her consort; for her niece, it's that she's finally an adult. And for the white dactyl, he found a new mate even after he'd sworn off chick-rearing in his golden years.
- Badass Family: Well, they are a pack of Utahraptors. While perhaps the tiniest chicks can't really kick ass, their older sister and the adults sure can, and in fact have to in order to provide meat for themselves. Herbivores aren't exactly going to go down without a fight, after all.
- Beware My Stinger Tail: Gastonia. Also the scorpion, but it's essentially useless against the Aegialodon.
- Big Damn Heroes: Raptor Red's consort saving her from a pack of Deinonychs, after the whip-tail battle.
- Big Eater: Like modern small mammals, the high metabolism and small body size of the Aegialodon mean that he has to eat almost constantly during his waking hours.
- Celibate Hero: The old white dactyl. In his long life he'd had many mates, all of whom have likely passed on at this point, and by the time we first see him it's stated that he no longer has any desire to mate. Until the end, that is.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Kronosaurus. Raptor Red and her consort discover they can 'play' with the Kronos by baiting them into lunging out of the ocean. Raptor Red later uses the trick to get an Acrocanthosaurus eaten by a Kronosaurus.
- Chick Magnet: Raptor Red's consort.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: This is strongly implied to be one of the reasons (besides the one directly stated in the text) that Raptor Red's sister hates and tries to chase off Raptor Red's consort.
- Cool Aunt: Raptor Red is this to her sister's chicks, being more easy-going, playful, and clever compared to their surly and impulsive mother.
- Cool Old Guy: The white dactyl. He's old even by dactyl standards, and has chosen to spend his golden years dicking around with the land-based predators. He and Raptor Red's clan have a friendly, if distant, relationship, since he considers Raptor Red herself the moving centre of his territory, and he helps the pack on more than one occasion (though occasionally only accidentally).
- Curb-Stomp Battle: The Utahraptor vs. most of the things they decide to hunt, the whip tail vs. the Utahraptor, the Aegialodon vs. the scorpion, Kronosaurus vs. Acrocanthosaurus, Gastonia vs. almost any predator (unless the Gastonia is weakened and has its abdomen exposed), and the Utahraptor vs. Deinonychus (unless the Utahraptor are already severely weakened).
- Darwinist Desire: Justified since the character is a Utahraptor. When choosing mates she prioritizes fitness and strength. She rejects a yellow snout raptor who tries to court her despite being another subspecies and later, another suitor is rejected because he has parasites. Eventually, she is persuaded by a red snout male to pair up. Her thoughts are that he's strong and smart. Another female, meanwhile, keeps getting rejected because she's freakishly big and the males sense something wrong.
- Dead Guy Junior: In spirit, even though no one has any names. Raptor Red's sister's oldest chick grows up to resemble her mother so strongly that, as Raptor Red sees the remains of the pack approaching after a hunt, she briefly thinks her sister has come back to life.
- Death of a Child: One of Raptor Red's sister's chicks dies from illness, and even before this, Raptor Red and her sister seriously consider abandoning the chicks during a famine.
- Devoured by the Horde: There are several scenes where the Utahraptors hunt prey in this manner, much as they are thought to have done in real life.
- Disappeared Dad: Raptor Red's sister has chicks, but there's not a single mention of her mate.
- A Dog Named "Dog": Every single character is "named" like this: the animals don't have individual names for each other or even themselves. "Raptor Red" is just a rough translation of her self-perception, and other characters are either "named" in relation to her (such as her sister and her consort) or by their species (such as the white dactyl and various acros.)
- Dying Race: By the book’s Early Cretaceous setting, whip-tails (sauropods related to Diplodocus) are on their way out due to a deadly plague.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Meta example in Gastonia, which featured in this book before being scientifically published.
- Eats Babies: All of the predators, as a matter of survival. None of the animals are portrayed as bad for their baby-snacking ways, but the parents obviously object, which causes drama at various points: Raptor Red's sister is afraid that Red's consort will eat her chicks, one of the chicks nearly gets eaten by a young acro, and a family of acros attacks Red's family because they know Utahraptors will raid acro nests given half the chance.
- Face Framed in Shadow: When Raptor Red and her sister encounter the segnosaur, it's in a dimly lit cave. Raptor Red only catches glimpses of the creature before her sister kills it in the dark, after which they observe its corpse. This was likely done as a means to circumvent the lack of clarity regarding the nature of segnosaurs (therizinosaurs) in the '90s.
- Family-Unfriendly Death: Several. The Astrodon that Raptor Red and her first mate kill and her first mate's subsequent death, an Acrocanthosaurus' death at the hands of a Kronosaurus - even the scorpion that was killed by the Aegialodon.
- Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: A subtle variant, but the Utahraptors’ symbiotic relationship with the Old White Dactyl appears to be based on the similar symbiosis between modern wolves and ravens, with pack hunting predators forming a partnership with a wily, mischievous flyer.
- The Kronosaurus is depicted attacking terrestrial prey by launching itself into the shallows like modern-day killer whales when hunting seals.
- Flowers of Romance: A field of primitive flowers attracts Utahraptors from all over, many of which attempt to court each other.
- The Great Flood: One of the middle chapters concerns a catastrophic flood, the kind that only happens once every 1,000 years. Visualized here
. - Giant Flyer: Some of the pterosaurs, but in particular the old dactyl, a giant among giants. This is of course Truth in Television - pterosaurs are some of the biggest flighted animals to ever exist.
- Herbivores Are Friendly: Averted. The main viewpoint characters are carnivores, and they have to work hard for their meals against wary and violent prey. Some herbivores they won't even touch outside of extremely unusual circumstances because of how good their defenses are. And woe betide the predator who encounters an unknown herbivore who doesn't fear them: it usually means they have a deadly trick the carnivore doesn't know about until it's too late.
- Hidden Depths: The sliding-with-troodons scene. "The concepts do not go together."
- Killer Rabbit: The tiny furry Aegialodon is a voracious insectivore that can curbstomp a scorpion.
- Magnetic Girlfriend: During the flower chapter, Raptor Red's consort is made much more attractive to the other Utahraptor females by the simple fact of being a consort.
- Make Sure He's Dead: The whip-tail. After his first Tail Slap knocks Raptor Red's sister down and she stops moving, he closes in and hits her three more times.
- Mama Bear:
- Raptor Red's sister. Part of why she's so hostile to Raptor Red's consort is out of trepidation that he may kill her chicks.
- The Bernissartia is a highly protective mother, protecting her brood from danger using flashy, dramatic displays of aggression."She's a fiercely protective croc-mom — she's never hesitated to rush from the water, openmouthed, at any dinosaur or male croc that got too close to her progeny. This threat, accompanied by extravagant splashing, always worked."
- Meek Mesozoic Mammal: One chapter focuses on a tiny, shrew-like mammal that lives in the same area as Red and her family, and his struggles to avoid being eaten or stepped on by the massive dinosaurs. Though he does escape one dinosaur's attempt to eat him by biting it on the snout.
- Meet Cute: There's a clearly-defined protocol for when a male raptor and a female raptor meet. The first two times Raptor Red meets her future consort, circumstances force them to break it.
- Misplaced Wildlife: Aegialodon is only known from England, not North America, and the early bird Sinornis is only known from China. Hand Waved by saying that they migrated over land bridges connecting North America with Asia and West Europe during the Early Cretaceous.
- Mockumentary: The serious kind. It's fiction, but it's presented as a nature documentary with some insight into the animals' thoughts, using accurate science for the time.
- Most Writers Are Human: At one point the story suddenly swerves into a two-chapter subplot about an insectivorous mammal living beneath the notice of the "earthquake animals", mainly because he's one of humanity's ancestors.
- Mugging the Monster: Raptor Red's sister thinks the whip-tailed sauropod will be an easy kill. Turns out he has an incredibly powerful tail and is extremely accurate with it.
- Never Smile at a Crocodile: A Bernissartia is a minor character. Utahraptor did not coexist with any of the known giant crocodylomorphs of the Mesozoic, but smaller species are still mentioned as a potential threat to juvenile Utahraptor.
- No Guy Wants an Amazon: There's a scene in which the normally isolated Utahraptor packs are drawn together by flowers that smell of carrion, during which time a giant red-snout female attempts to woo Raptor Red's consort. Raptor Red takes issue with this, and the consort is more than a little freaked out about the whole thing. When he and Raptor Red make it very clear that she isn't welcome, the giantess leaves with sadness; the narration informs us that her size meant she'd been dealing with rejection the whole day.
- No Name Given: The ornithomimid, troodontid, and therizinosaur are never referred to by a specific genus name, since all three are speculative species.
- The Nose Knows: It's established early on that Utahraptors rely primarily on their olfactory sense to hunt and perceive the world. The consort is even able to identify Raptor Red and her sister as female Utahraptors by sniffing their dung and tracking them down from that.
- Outliving One's Offspring: One of Raptor Red’s chicks dies from a sickness.
- Papa Wolf: Raptor Red's consort, and over her sister's chick, no less. He has mixed feelings about his actions: the chick isn't related to him, he gets several cracked ribs out of the deal, and Raptor Red didn't even see him help save her. The event keeps her sister off his back for a while, at least.
- Pintsized Powerhouse: The baby Gastonia. Also the Aegialodon, at least against large arthropods.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Calm, methodical Raptor Red is the blue oni to her sister's manic red.
- Retired Badass: The Old Dactyl may be a homeless scavenger past his prime, but he's still a gigantic and wily creature who knows anything that flies can escape injury and death from anything that can't fly if it's careful. Given he doesn't have any chicks or mates to worry about anymore, he just takes advantage of his physical prowess and wisdom for fun these days.
- Scavengers Are Scum: Completely averted. All the predators view scavenging as being better than hunting (so long as the carcass isn't too putrid) because it requires less energy and there's less risk of being injured.
- Sea Monster: Several marine reptiles show up, notably Kronosaurus.
- Shown Their Work: The author is a paleontologist, after all. It was completely up to date by 1995 standards, but, of course, paleontology is a very fast-moving science, so a lot of the details are now outdated.
- Small Role, Big Impact: The Aegialodon and Kronosaurus.
- Snow Means Death: Raptor Red's sister, and nearly Raptor Red herself.
- Stinky Flower: One chapter details the first arrival of a flowering plant into Raptor Red's world. Because insect pollinators like bees and butterflies have yet to evolve, this planet gives off the scents of rotting meat and herbivore dung to attract flies and carrion beetles. Raptor Red and the other carnivores in the area are driven nuts by it, as their noses are telling them that there's a huge feast right there that they can't find.
- Sturdy and Steady Turtles: One chapter focuses on a Trinitichelys, contrasting her highly asocial lifestyle with that of the Utahraptor and demonstrating the effectiveness of the turtle shell as a defense. Even Raptor Red, a highly intelligent predator for her time, cannot figure out how to get past the shell of a living turtle, despite having scavenged on dead ones.
- Tail Slap:
- The whip-tail sauropod's devastating main weapon is a long, whiplike tail that he uses to strike down his enemies. Raptor Red's introduction to it is the whip-tail smashing a scar into a tree down to the sap.
- The giant female Utahraptor smacks a rival with her tail while trying to win a mate.
- Too Dumb to Live: Tragically, Raptor Red's sister because she doesn't know or ignores one of the essential laws of predators - if something isn't scared of you it probably has a good reason not to be scared and you should leave it alone.
- Translation Convention: The animals in this book have no real language and mostly think in pictures, sounds, and smells. Bakker provides helpful English translations for their thought patterns and communications.
- Wolverine Claws: The segnosaurs are the most obvious example of this, but the raptors and ostrich dinos have more simple versions of this.
- Xenofiction: The novel is entirely from the perspective of non-humans who don't have language or even names. Much text is spent characterizing them despite these limitations.
- Zerg Rush: Both the Utahraptor and Deinonychus mob their prey to death, relying on numbers to bring down larger prey items. The Utahraptor are more organized about it, while the Deinonychus are more akin to a loose mob.
