Haymarket Media

Magazine -” Third Sector”; Crystal Palace Dinosaurs

Location Photography “Scientific Inaccuracies of early Palaeontology”

Image Use - Editorial Print - Magazine

The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs are a series of sculptures of dinosaurs and other extinct animals, incorrect by modern standards, located at London’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 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 Plesiosaursmainly 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 paleontology, 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.