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Description
Pyroraptor olympius is small dromaeosaur known from poor and fragmentary material but popular due to its name and appearances in the 2003 documentary “Dinosaur Planet” and the more recent movie “Jurassic World: Dominion”. Pyroraptor lived during the late Cretaceous, 70 million years ago; on what today is France and northern Spain. It was small, around 1,4 meters in length.
One particular detail of this reconstruction is the fact that is depicted with vertical slit pupils instead of the round pupils we see in birds of prey of today. Sometimes is suggested that dinosaurs shouldn’t be depicted with vertical pupils because this is a “reptilian trait” and because it was very abundant in outdated paleoart, and that dinosaurs should be depicted with round pupils because is what birds have today. But in reality, the shape of the pupils is more related to the niche and survival strategy of the animal. Silt pupils are ideal for predators that are active both on night and day; they work well for ambush predators because they help measuring the distance between the animal and the prey, especially when they are very close to the ground or a surface. This is why we see slit pupils in crocodiles, cats, foxes, some snakes, geckos, and even the black skimmer bird. So there is no reason why small predatory dinosaurs couldn’t have slit pupils, or even other shapes like the horizontal pupils we see on many herbivore mammals today.

Description
Pyroraptor olympius is small dromaeosaur known from poor and fragmentary material but popular due to its name and appearances in the 2003 documentary “Dinosaur Planet” and the more recent movie “Jurassic World: Dominion”. Pyroraptor lived during the late Cretaceous, 70 million years ago; on what today is France and northern Spain. It was small, around 1,4 meters in length.
One particular detail of this reconstruction is the fact that is depicted with vertical slit pupils instead of the round pupils we see in birds of prey of today. Sometimes is suggested that dinosaurs shouldn’t be depicted with vertical pupils because this is a “reptilian trait” and because it was very abundant in outdated paleoart, and that dinosaurs should be depicted with round pupils because is what birds have today. But in reality, the shape of the pupils is more related to the niche and survival strategy of the animal. Silt pupils are ideal for predators that are active both on night and day; they work well for ambush predators because they help measuring the distance between the animal and the prey, especially when they are very close to the ground or a surface. This is why we see slit pupils in crocodiles, cats, foxes, some snakes, geckos, and even the black skimmer bird. So there is no reason why small predatory dinosaurs couldn’t have slit pupils, or even other shapes like the horizontal pupils we see on many herbivore mammals today.