1854 sculpture series in Crystal Palace Park, London, United Kingdom
The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs are a series of sculptures of dinosaurs and other extinct animals, inaccurate by modern standards, in the London borough of Bromley's Crystal Palace Park. Commissioned in 1852 to accompany the Crystal Palace after its move from the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, they were unveiled in 1854 as the first dinosaur sculptures in the world. The models were designed and sculpted by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins under the scientific direction of Sir Richard Owen, representing the latest scientific knowledge at the time. The models, also known as the Geological Court or Dinosaur Court, were classed as Grade II listed buildings from 1973, extensively restored in 2002, and upgraded to Grade I listed in 2007.
The models represent 15 genera of extinct animals, only three of which are true dinosaurs. They are from a wide range of geological ages, and include true dinosaurs, ichthyosaurs, and plesiosaurs mainly from the Mesozoic era, and some mammals from the more recent Cenozoic era. Today, the models are notable for representing the scientific inaccuracies of early palaeontology, the result of improperly reconstructed fossils and the nascent nature of the science in the 19th century, with the "Iguanodon" and "Megalosaurus" models being particularly singled out.
History.
Following the closure of the Great Exhibition in October 1851, Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace was bought and moved to Penge Place atop Sydenham Hill, South London, by the newly formed Crystal Palace Company. The grounds that surrounded it were then extensively renovated and turned into a public park with ornamental gardens, replicas of statues and two new man-made lakes. As part of this renovation, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins was commissioned to build the first-ever life-sized models of extinct animals. He had originally planned to just re-create extinct mammals before deciding on building dinosaurs as well, which he did with advice from Sir Richard Owen, a celebrated anatomist and palaeontologist of the time. 
Hawkins set up a workshop on site at the park and built the models there. The dinosaurs were built full-size in clay, from which a mould was taken allowing cement sections to be cast. The larger sculptures are hollow with a brickwork interior. There was also a limestone cliff to illustrate different geological strata. The sculptures and the geological displays were originally called "the Geological Court", an extension of the set of exhibits made for the park that reconstructed historic art, including the Renaissance, Assyrian, and Egyptian Courts.
The models were displayed on three islands acting as a rough timeline, the first island for the Palaeozoic era, a second for the Mesozoic, and a third for the Cenozoic. The models were given more realism by making the water level in the lake rise and fall, revealing different amounts of the dinosaurs. To mark the launch of the models, Hawkins held a dinner on New Year's Eve 1853 inside the mould of one of the "Iguanodon" models.
Hawkins benefited greatly from the public's reaction to the dinosaurs, which was so strong it allowed for the sale of sets of small versions of the dinosaur models, priced at £30 for educational use. But the building of the models was costly (having cost around £13,729) and in 1855, the Crystal Palace Company cut Hawkins's funding. Several planned models were never made, while those half finished were scrapped, despite protest from sources including the Sunday newspaper, "The Observer".
Hawkins later worked on a "Palaeozoic Museum" in New York's Central Park, an American equivalent to the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs. In May 1871 many of the exhibits in Hawkins' workshop were destroyed by vandals and their fragments buried, possibly including elements of the original "Elasmosaurus" skeleton, which the American palaeontologist Edward Drinker Cope had loaned to Hawkins for preparation at the time.
With progress in palaeontology, the reputation of the Crystal Palace models declined. In 1895, the American fossil hunter Othniel Charles Marsh scorned the dinosaurs' friends as doing them a great injustice, and spoke angrily of the models. The models and the park fell into disrepair as the years went by, a process aided by the fire that destroyed the Crystal Palace itself in 1936, and the models became obscured by overgrown foliage. A full restoration of the animals was carried out in 1952 by Victor H.C. Martin, at which time the mammals on the third island were moved to less well-protected locations in the park, where they were exposed to wear and tear. The limestone cliff was blown up in the 1960s.
In 2001, the display was totally renovated. The destroyed limestone cliff was completely replaced using 130 large blocks of Derbyshire limestone, many weighing over , rebuilt according to a small model made from the same number of polystyrene blocks. Fibreglass replacements were created for the missing sculptures, and badly damaged parts of the surviving models were recast. For example, some of the animals' legs had been modelled in lead, fixed to the bodies with iron rods; the iron had rusted, splitting the lead open.
The models and other elements of Crystal Palace Park were classed as Grade II listed buildings from 1973. The models were extensively restored in 2001, and upgraded to Grade I listed in 2007.
In 2018, the Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs ran a crowd funding campaign, endorsed by the guitarist Slash, to build a permanent bridge to Dinosaur Island. The bridge was designed by Tonkin Liu with engineering by Arup. The bridge swings on a pivot so it can be parked when not in use, to prevent unauthorised access. It was installed in January 2021.
In May 2021, the nose and mouth of the "Megalosaurus" sculpture was given an emergency renovation, after it had fallen off the previous year. Twenty-two new teeth and a 'prosthetic jaw' were installed on the sculpture. The renovation was funded by a grant from the Cultural Recovery Fund and fundraising from Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs.
The Dinosaur Park.
Fifteen genera of extinct animals, not all dinosaurs, are represented in the park. At least three other genera ("Dinornis", a mastodon, and "Glyptodon") were planned, and Hawkins began to build at least the mastodon before the Crystal Palace Company cut his funding in 1855. An inaccurate map of the time shows planned locations of the "Dinornis" and mastodon.
Palaeozoic era.
The Palaeozoic era is represented in the park by the model rock exposure showing a succession of beds, namely the Carboniferous (including Coal Measures and limestone) and Permian.
Crystal Palace's two "Dicynodon" models are based on incomplete Permian fossils found in South Africa, along with Owen's guess that they were similar to turtles. No evidence has been found to suggest "Dicynodon" had protective shells.
Mesozoic era.
The Mesozoic era is represented in the park by the model rock exposure showing a succession of beds, namely the Jurassic and Cretaceous, by models of dinosaurs and other animals known from mesozoic fossils, and by suitable vegetation – both living plants and models.
Curiously, it is "Hylaeosaurus", from the Cretaceous of England, not "Iguanodon", that most resembles the giant iguana stereotype of early ideas of dinosaurs. The "Hylaeosaurus" in reality is much like "Ankylosaurus" – smallish quadrupedal herbivore with a knobbled armoured back, and spines along its sides. Hawkins's depiction is of a large Iguana-like beast with long sharp spines along its back, which Owen noted were "accurately given in the restoration [by Hawkins, to Owen's instructions, but] necessarily at present conjectural".
The "Ichthyosaurus" models are based on Triassic or Jurassic fossils from Europe. Though the three ichthyosaurs are partly in water, they are implausibly shown basking on land like seals. Owen supposed they resembled crocodiles or plesiosaurs. Better fossil evidence shows that they have more in common with sharks and dolphins, having a dorsal fin and fish-like tail, whereas in Hawkins's models the tail is a flat protuberance from a straight backbone. A further discrepancy is that the models' eyes have exposed bony sclerotic plates, Owen conjecturing that with such large eyes they had "great powers of vision, especially in the dusk". They became one of the three mascots of Crystal Palace Park, along with the "Iguanodon" and "Megalosaurus" (although ichthyosaurs are not dinosaurs). Coincidentally, the models more closely resemble more basic ichthyosaurs such as "Cymbospondylus".
The "Iguanodon" models represent fossils from the Jurassic and Cretaceous of Europe. Gideon Mantell sketched the original fossil, found in Sussex in 1822 by his wife, Mary Ann Mantell, as like a long slender lizard climbing a branch (on four legs), balancing with a whiplike tail; lacking a skull, he conjectured that the thumb bone was a nose horn. The nose horn in particular is used repeatedly in popular textbooks and documentaries about dinosaurs to make fun of Victorian inaccuracies; actually, even in 1854, Owen commented "the horn [is] more than doubtful".
Three "Labyrinthodon" models were made for Crystal Palace, based on Owen's guess that, being amphibian in lifestyle, the Triassic animals might have resembled frogs; he named them Batrachia, from the Greek 'Batrachios', frog. One is smooth skinned and is based on the species ""Labyrinthodon salamandroides" ("Mastodonsaurus jaegeri"); the other two were based on "Labyrinthodon pachygnathus"" ("Cyclotosaurus pachygnathus"). Casts of "Chirotherium" footprints that Owen thought were made by the animals were included in the ground around the models.
Gigantic and visually impressive, the "Megalosaurus" became one of the park's three 'mascot dinosaurs' along with the "Iguanodon" and (less so) the Ichthyosaurs. Working from fragmentary evidence from Jurassic fossils found in England, consisting mainly of a hip and femur (thigh bone), with a rib and a few vertebrae, Owen conjectured the animal was quadrupedal; palaeontologists now believe it to have been bipedal (standing like "Tyrannosaurus rex"). The first suggestion that some dinosaurs might have been bipedal came in 1858, just too late to influence the model.
When the models were built, only skulls of the Cretaceous fossil "Mosasaurus" had been discovered in the Netherlands, so Hawkins only built the head and back of the animal. He submerged the model deep in the lake, leaving the body unseen and undefined. The "Mosasaurus" at Crystal Palace is positioned in an odd place near the secondary island that was originally a waterfall, and much of it is not visible from the lakeside path.
The three "Plesiosaurus" models represents three species of marine reptile, "P. macrocephalus", "P. dolichoderius" and "P. hawkinsii", from the Jurassic of England. Two of them have implausibly-flexible necks.
Owen noted that the "Pterodactylus" fossils from the Jurassic of Germany had scales, not feathers, and while "somewhat bird-like" they had conical teeth, suggesting they were predatory. The two surviving models are perched on a rock outcrop; there were originally two more 'pterodactyls of the Oolite'. The surviving models represent "Pterodactylus cuvieri" (= "Cimoliopterus cuvieri"), whereas the two other lost pterodactyl models represent "Pterodactylus bucklandi" (= "Dolicorhamphus bucklandi"). The latter species was poorly known based on fossil remains and explains why their designs were more based on "Pterodactylus antiquus".
Owen correctly identified "Teleosaurus" as similar to gharials, being slender Jurassic Crocodilians with very long thin jaws and small eyes, inferring from the sediment in which they were found that they were "more strictly marine than the crocodile of the Ganges [the gharial]."
Cenozoic era.
"Anoplotherium commune" is an extinct mammal species from the late Eocene to earliest Oligocene epochs, first found near Paris. Hawkins's models draw on Owen's speculation about its camel-like appearance. Three models were made, forming a small herd. Hawkins seemingly closely followed George Cuvier's reconstructions of "A. commune", giving it short or naked hair following Cuvier's view that its anatomy implied an aquatic lifestyle. Hawkins deviated from Cuvier by making it look more camel-like with small lips, small and rounded ears, a sloping skull, and four toes on each foot. These errors are the result of Hawkins' overreliance on camelids as an analogue for anoplotheriids. "Anoplotherium" is today thought to have used its robust build and long tail for bipedal browsing.
Confusion between whether the "A. commune" sculptures were of "A. gracile" (= "Xiphodon gracilis") is common, resulting from 19th-century guidebooks listing both species as present on the Tertiary Island. "A. gracile" was another fossil species studied by Cuvier; it was later determined to be of a distinct genus "Xiphodon". Today, the sculptures of the three animals are confirmed to be of "A. commune", but the "Megaloceros" fawn has been identified as a misplaced statue of "A. gracile". An 1854 illustration reveals that there were once four "A. gracile" sculptures, three of which were