His mother could not be reached for comment.

Early today the “Jurassic Park” Velociraptor filed a defamation of character suit against the Discovery Channel and paleontologists everywhere, claiming that they had made it impossible for him to get new work.

The star of the Jurassic Park series of films, in which he played several roles Patty-Duke style, believes that the new versions of Velociraptor recently appearing on such shows as Dinosaur Planet and in all major books published about dinosaurs in the last few years have seriously affected his reputation.

These new Velociraptors bear little resemblance, except in body shape, to the devilishly clever and violent creature we remember from the blockbuster movies. They are shorter, smarter, and have feathers. The Jurassic Park Velociraptor feels that not only has the changed appearance of the Velociraptor prevented him from getting any new work, but that the actions shown on the new dinosaur specials incorrectly slight his character.

“They’ve turned me into a damn coward!” The JP raptor is quoted as saying. “I’m still smart, but instead of using it to kill giant creatures many times my size, I use it to steal eggs. In the White Tip episode of Dinosaur Planet, not only do the Velociraptors eat carrion, they run away from a bunch of egg-stealing Ovaraptors! Egg suckers! I would never do such a thing!”

Indeed, he would not. Many of us remember the classic moment in Jurassic Park where the pack of Velociraptors (all played by the JP raptor, and then spliced together), rush at and attack the T-Rex, only to meet their own demise.

Paleontologists, however, insist that the new behavior is much more accurate in nature. No animal, excepting humans, is stupid enough to commit suicide. A raptor might fight a T-Rex if cornered, but certainly would charge one to certain death. If a Velociraptor ever met a T-Rex in the first place, which isn’t all that likely. And why spend energy killing something when a free meal is present?

Believe it or not, though, it is not these cowardly actions which form the meat of the JP raptor’s lawsuit. His main beef is with the short feathers that velociraptors are now seen wearing all the time. “They make us look like Ostriches with teeth! My wonderful lizard skin is much more menacing, don’t you think? Who’s going to be afraid of a big damn bird?”

The JP raptor does not dispute the recent findings in China of raptors with very distinct feather impressions in the fossils. However, he doesn’t believe, as scientists do, that this means the raptors had feathers. His theory, and I quote, is that “maybe there were a bunch of really big chicken things living in China then. And that was our main food source, you know? And then, just after a pack of my brethren killed a whole lot of them for food and fun, a mudslide came and BAM! We’re buried alive, fossilized, and with feather impressions . That makes a whole lot more sense than us actually having feathers. I mean, for Christ’s sake, we’re reptiles!”

Paleontologists aren’t buying it, though. They continue to stick by their raptor-with-feathers findings, and seek to have the lawsuit tossed out of court as frivolous. In addition to claiming that all of the “defamation” charges are supported by scientific evidence, they also say that the reason JP raptor can no longer find work is an increase in Velociraptors applying for jobs. There are now at least ten different models working the acting market, and there may be as many as thirty. The two they picked for Dinosaur Planet, in addition to being up to date with scientific findings, were better actors in their opinion. (They hired two, instead of the usual one, so they could show differences in colors between the sexes). A third Velociraptor actor was hired and had his feathers died a dark red so that he could play a second, new species of raptor from Europe, called a Pyroraptor, in another episode. “The market is just flooded,” a spokesman wrote us in an email when questioned.

The Discovery Channel is greatly upset about the lawsuit, since it gave the JP raptor a cameo in the same episode it is now using as the basis for its lawsuit. They now say that no matter what the outcome in court, JP raptor will never be given work on any of their specials again, unless it’s in stock footage.

JP raptor doesn’t care about the threat. If he loses, he thinks his career is over anyway. And if he wins, he should have enough to live comfortably for the rest of his life. (He should have had that much by now anyway, but blew most of his JP earnings on a ranch filled with wild and exotic game animals, which have to be replenished constantly.)

“I have to win this lawsuit to survive. The only thing Hollywood would cast me as now is some cheap horror movie villain, and I’m not ready to be Roseanne quite yet.”