Breaking the Curse II

The curse of the deinonychosaurs ("raptor" dinosaurs) is this: they are so cool that some people think they can kill anything, or at least any plant-eating dinosaur. We see this in TV programs like Clash of the Dinosaurs and Jurassic Fight Club. I've even seen it in some children's books on dinosaurs. I love deinonychosaurs, too. They are among my favorite dinosaurs, but dinosaurs are real-life animals, not sci-fi monsters. This is especially absurd when we talk about troodonts or basal dromaeosaurids - every inch of their anatomy shows they chased after smaller animals. Troodonts may have even eaten some plants. Eudromaeosaurs (derived dromaeosaurids), including Velociraptor mongoliensis and Deinonychus antirrhopus, may have been able to manage slightly larger prey, especially if they were group hunters, which is debatable. However, this doesn't mean they're going to attack something hundreds of times their size like a half-grown sauropod (giant long-necked plant-eating dinosaur) or a large hadrosaur (duck-billed dinosaur). Yet, there really are media out there that show them doing this, or claim that they're capable of it. No kidding.