Whose team built the life-sized animatronic dinosaurs for Jurassic Park?

Stan Winston’s team built the life-sized animatronic dinosaurs for Jurassic Park.

Winston, a celebrated special-effects and makeup artist, led the practical-effects workshop responsible for the film’s full-size mechanical creatures. The team built major animatronic dinosaurs, including the Tyrannosaurus rex and the sick Triceratops, allowing actors and cameras to interact with convincing physical animals on set.

The animatronics used hydraulic systems, motors, articulated structures and flexible skins. The T. rex was especially demanding: its enormous body had to move with enough force and realism to sell the famous paddock attack, yet remain controllable for filming. Practical creatures also gave the performers real surfaces, shadows and physical reactions to respond to.

Winston’s work was only one part of the production. Industrial Light & Magic created many digital dinosaur shots, while Phil Tippett contributed earlier stop-motion and go-motion planning. That mix of practical and digital effects is often blurred in casual descriptions, but the canonical answer for the life-sized animatronic dinosaurs is Stan Winston.