Paleontology writer Brian Switek, author of "Written In Stone" and the Laelaps blog, recently stumbled upon a cleverly nuanced bit of animated Soviet propaganda that touches on his field of expertise.

Before the mid-1960s, it was widely believed that all dinosaurs were cold-blooded, slow-moving animals. But in the summer of 1964, a team of paleontologists led by John Ostrom discovered Deinonychus, ...