'Jurassic Park' had it right: Some dinosaurs hunted by night

Stephen Spielberg's movie Jurassic Park got one thing right. Velociraptors hunted by night while big plant-eating dinosaurs browsed around the clock, according to a paper on the eyes of fossil animals published on-line this week in Science Express.That overturns the conventional wisdom that dinosaurs were active by day while early mammals scurried around at night, said Ryosuke Motani, a geologist at the University of California at Davis, and a co-author of the paper.

Dinosaurs, lizards and birds all have a bony ring called the "scleral ring" in their eyes, although this is lacking in mammals and crocodiles.
Flying creatures, including early birds and pterosaurs, were mostly day-active, although some of the pterosaurs--including a filter-feeding animal that probably lived like a duck, and a fish-eating pterosaur--were apparently night-active.