Whose 1917 Tyrannosaurus skeletal diagram inspired the Jurassic Park novel cover?

Henry Fairfield Osborn’s 1917 Tyrannosaurus skeletal diagram inspired the Jurassic Park novel cover.

While designing the first-edition cover, Chip Kidd wanted a simple image that suggested a living dinosaur without showing a flesh-and-blood animal. He visited the dinosaur halls of the American Museum of Natural History, where the Tyrannosaurus skeleton provided the visual direction. Kidd then sketched a skeleton and found a dinosaur textbook containing Osborn’s illustration.

Osborn was an American paleontologist and museum leader whose work helped shape early public understanding of Tyrannosaurus. His 1917 skeletal reconstruction became the basis for the iconic black dinosaur silhouette associated with the novel and later the wider Jurassic Park brand.

The cover was designed as a wraparound image extending over the spine and back, reinforcing the idea of something too large to be confined to one surface. Barnum Brown discovered important Tyrannosaurus fossils, Othniel Charles Marsh worked on many earlier dinosaur discoveries, and Charles R. Knight was a famous paleoartist, but none is the credited source of this particular diagram.