The dinosaurs at the Dinosaur Walk Museum are created by some of the world’s greatest paleo-artists. “Paleo” means ancient or prehistoric, meaning the artists re-create creatures from prehistoric times. The dinosaur sculptures are called “flesh replications.”
These artists use actual fossils, footprints, and other information to create the dinosaurs. The skeletons of the dinosaurs are reproduced using wood. The wooden skeleton is then covered in clay and sculpted to the dinosaur’s actual size.
For information on how the muscles should look, (like how much muscle mass a large animal would need to move), the artists base their designs on modern-day animals. Then the clay models are molded and reproduced in fiberglass, assembled and painted, becoming some of the most realistic dinosaurs ever produced.
The dinosaurs are made the actual size that they were when they roamed the earth. Production began on some of the pieces over a decade ago. Transporting the dinosaurs requires careful packing of full-size semi trucks. The larger dinosaurs are put together, like a giant puzzle, at the museums.
A funny story
The dinosaurs are manufactured in the desert in Utah. At one of the museums during installation, the second-largest dinosaur was accidentally knocked over by a worker. The four-foot-long head came off, bounced up in the air, and crashed into another dinosaur. This caused the smaller dinosaur’s arm to come off. Immediately, a giant kangaroo rat ran out of the arm hole. He raced out of the dinosaur as fast as he could. The kangaroo rat had apparently crawled into the dinosaur when it was being made in Utah and somehow became trapped. He ran out the door and was never seen again!