People working with dinosaurs today often developed their passion playing with plastic dinosaurs in childhood. But how accurate were these childish dinosaur depictions?

“Not Very” in the opinion of dinosaur expert Steven Bellettini in this Atlas Obscura article. Hands shown facing downwards, bodies and tails touching the ground, wrist spikes repositioned on the nose, scales instead of feathers, lizard green skin instead of brightly coloured… the list is endless. The article shows ludicrous examples of badly misrepresented specimens versus a better picture based on anatomical evidence. Velociraptor was no bigger than a turkey (forget Jurassic Park) and may have looked more like a flightless hawk than an iguana.

PNSO is an up-to-date (if expensive) vendor of dinosaur models. Steven Bellettini calls them the “gold standard”.