Gregory Scott Paul is an American freelance researcher, author, and illustrator. He is well known for paleontological reconstructions of prehistoric life and his studies on religion.

Wikipedia has a more detailed and comprehensive article on Gregory S. Paul









Involvment in the Franchise

Michael Crichton acknowledged Gregory S. Paul in the Jurassic Park novel has having drawn from Paul's work. Paul notably created the classification of Deinonychus as a species of Velociraptor in his 1988 book Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, which was used in the novel itself.[1]

Paul was later consulted for the film adapation in pre-production, creating skeletal and muscle studies of the Tyrannosaurus rex and Velociraptor to be used as the base forms of these dinosaurs.[2][3] Similar to those found in his book Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, Paul has written that he never received any feedback for the diagrams of the raptors he created.[4] A T. rex skeletal from this book was utilized by Steve 'Spaz' Williams to design the first digital T. rex[5] with Paul's drawings also being used to create the T. rex in Stefan Dechant's digitial storyboards.[6] According to paleontologist Dr. Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. the film also used the Predatory Dinosaurs of The World's classification of Yangchuanosaurus as a species of Metriacanthosaurus.[7] Paul has said that Mike Trcic used one of his T. rex skeletals when the Tyrannosaurus rex,[8] but director Steven Spielberg and Stan Winston ordered the dinosaurs to receive alternations from the current scientific knowledge of the dinosaurs Paul created skeletals for to copyright their designs, even though Trcic wanted to strictly use Gregory S. Paul's diagrams.[4][2][8] Finally, Paul suggested to the filmmakers to make the Velociraptors feathered after it was decided to use CGI over go motion to depict the dinosaurs, but it could not be done due to the limitations in computer animation at the time.[9]

The diagrams Paul created for the first film were seen on-screen inside the bungalow at the Dig Site where Drs. Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler meet John Hammond.[2] In addition, skull diagrams by Paul of Deinonychus used for designing the film's Velociraptor were used on the card "Roar of the Raptor" of the Jurassic Park Topps trading cards[10] and artwork created by him was used for the Jurassic Park Souvenir Magazine.[3]