Wonderful Terrible Claw

How pretty is this Deinonychus! I mentioned when comparing Safari's Velociraptor figures from different years that the 2019 Deinonychus from the same company seems like an even more accurate raptor reconstruction, and seeing it in person now, it really is lovely.

Very birdlike, with the feathers obviously belonging on the animal, not a trace of the awkward stage paleoart went through after feathers started to turn out to be a very common integument for this type of dinosaurs, trying to reconcile that with the longer-established idea of what raptors looked like. I like the natural pose that looks like an animal minding its animal business, a lot of which doesn't have to involve trying to look scary to anyone. I could picture this thing walking with a head-twitchy birb gait, keeping an eye out for trouble or for food.

One thing that's kind of unfortunate is the tail being on the ground, though it does look like the tip is just temporarily touching the ground, not supporting weight or being dragged along the ground (a tail-dragging Deinonychus would be quite the oxymoron, actually, since the species name antirrhopus literally means "counterbalancing", referring to its stiff tail acting as such). A tripod pose like this is an understandable compromise to have the figure stand steadily... it just turns out it doesn't help in this case. Might be just the individual figure I have and maybe it works with other copies, but mine can't stand on its own, hence why it's in the plastic support in some of these photos. If the tail was heavier, it could keep the figure from falling forward, but I think it's mostly that the toes are warped, and don't stop it from falling in that direction. Too bad, but I can have it lean on things if it turns out I can't do anything about the toes.

The detail on the sculpt is beautiful, though, including on the tail, and I like the eagle-like stare of the red eyes.

I think it's about to scale with the Velociraptor!

It isn't with the JP/W Velociraptor figures, which are technically Deinonychus figures themselves. Especially compared to Blue who's actually quite a bit taller than the original JP raptors were (not reflected in their figures, which are about the same size), it should be about half the size it is now. But it's not like it's intended to be to scale with them or anything, just some trivia about raptor sizes.

The Dinosaurs in the Wild Dakotaraptor looks about right compared to it and the Velo. So here they are: the raptor JP raptors were originally based on anatomically, according to what was then known about its anatomy; the raptor they got their name from instead; and the raptor who's more of a match to the size the movie raptors ended up being. Dakotaraptor wasn't described until the year Jurassic World came out, and not much of it has been discovered, but it would have lived in the same area as Deinonychus (only later), so a raptor of that size apparently did live where doctors Sattler and Grant were digging up a "Velociraptor" after all. That, too, was based on Deinonychus, not Velociraptor mongoliensis, which as the full species name implies lived in what is now Mongolia.

I'm really happy to see Deinonychus getting some love. Its discovery has played a huge part in changing people's understanding of dinosaurs from cold-blooded, tail-dragging lizards to active, warm-blooded animals one could imagine to have evolved into birds, but it's gotten really overshadowed in popular culture since Jurassic Park, which also did a lot of good in its own way for furthering that image of bird-like dinosaurs. Almost 90 years after the first known specimens of it popped up and about fifty years since its naming, this birb has come a long way in our evolving understanding of just how much of a birb it was.