After watching a birthday episode of Dinosaur Dan on TVO, NB announced back in July or August that he wanted a Velociraptor birthday cake.  I believe Dinosaur Dan had a stegosaurus cake but not having watched the episode or seen the cake I don't know.
I thought in a week or a month his mind might change on what he wanted in a cake.  However, after the mention of different people's birthdays he kept mentioning that he wanted a velociraptor cake.  Time to brain storm. I knew my artistic skills weren't going to allow me to draw a facsimile that was more than the a blob with legs (it could be a therapod if you squint right). Maybe fondant, more of the same.
Time to hint pinterest.
Surprisingly there weren't many velociraptor cakes pinned there. There was this fossil one that I loved (but figured this isn't what NB had in mind). I then found this cake which seemed much more doable. I should probably mention in here, that the cake would be served in Toronto so it needed to be somewhat portable.

So I first made a flat chocolate cake (cause what soon to be 4 yo doesn't want chocolate cake for his birthday)

For the volcano (didn't I mention the Volcano), I bake Red Velvet cake into a mason jar, and a couple of ramekins. The rest I made into cupcakes.

When the cakes had cooled I made some icing, I left the crumb coat white, and tinted the rest. I then sketched a scene.

Added some colour. (I put graham crackers over the path). At this point the cake travelled to Toronto

I leveled one of the red velvet ramekins, iced with chocolate and added to the cake.  I repeated with the mason jar red velvet cupcake.  If I do this again I will put in a wooden skewer to secure the cake layers. The geological landscape was unstable and the volcano collapsed before the cake was served.

Lava was added to the volcano, the velociraptor, and some candied chocolate rocks.

It was a big hit and the little boy loved his cake, and couldn't wait to eat it.

I should mention that the only time NB had wavered on the Velociraptor cake theme was after seeing Aunt Emily's cake which he thought had a spider on it.  So he thought a spider fighting a scorpion would be a good birthday cake.  I disagreed.