VICTORIAN
DINOSAUR PARK
G'day folks,
This place might be news to many of you, especially those living in England.
Long before dinosaurs
were your Natural History Museum’s biggest attraction, a collection of
charmingly inaccurate sculptures in a South London park were once considered
the absolute authority on pre-historic reptiles. As the study of dinosaurs
progressed and the mistakes became more obvious, they turned into a national
embarrassment for the scientific community and yet today they are “Grade I
Listed Buildings”; holding the same status as St Paul’s Cathedral and
Buckingham Palace. This is their story.
The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs were the first dinosaur
sculptures in the world, unveiled in 1854, before the publication of Charles
Darwin’s Origin of Species.
At at time when the theory of evolution was treated as a blasphemous joke,
it was largely left to palaeontologists to fit dinosaur bones together like
giant incomplete jigsaws. The rush to finish a specimen and name it before a
rival did meant that there were many mistakes and inaccuracies. For example,
when English palaeontologist Gideon Mantell discovered the Iguanadon, he
placed the thumb spike of on the end of its nose, going unchallenged for many
years until later skeletons revealed his mistake.
Scientists and academics resorted to many underhand tactics
to be recognised for
their work and one of the main players in the ‘game of bones’ was Richard Owen;
a celebrity of Victorian society who coined the term ‘dinosaur’ in 1842
and identified many new species. But he also took credit for other
peoples‘ work and was described as a villainous man by more than a few of his
peers.
In 1851, Owen suggested to his acquaintance Prince Albert
that a display of sculptures depicting the first-known dinosaurs would make an
excellent addition to the attraction at Crystal Palace in London, which had
originally been built to house the Great Exhibition of 1851.
Benjamin Waterhouse
Hawkins was commissioned to create the models and on the eve of their
reveal, he hosted a lavish eight-course dinner party attended by
scientists, investors and other celebrities, who were seated inside a giant
mould of an Iguanodon. As the night progressed, the party grew more
raucous according to newspaper reports, continuing long after midnight with
guests consuming vast amounts of alcohol. Hawkins reported that “The roaring chorus was so fierce and
enthusiastic as almost to lead to the belief that the herd of Iguanodons were
bellowing“.
Notably absent was the scientist who had discovered the
Iguanodon, Gideon Mantell, for he had died the previous year. Guest of honour
Richard Owen conducted a toast for Mantell before claiming the discovery of the
Iguanadon for his own.
The finished sculptures were unveiled in 1854 and for
nearly fifty years afterward, over a million people per year went to see them.
The inaccurate works inspired writers
and artists, including Charles Dickens, who mentions the megalosaur in his
novel ‘Bleak House‘, making the first reference to dinosaurs in a popular
work.
As discoveries progressed in palaeontology and scientists
gained greater understanding of how dinosaurs moved and lived, the sculptures
began to look dated, almost abstract and very quickly became the source of
ridicule. The installation that had represented the most up-to-date knowledge
was now an embarrassment. Renowned palaeontologist Othniel Charles Marsh scorned the sculptures and
everybody associated with them, stating that the extinct creatures had been
done “a great injustice”. Tourism to the site dropped dramatically and the
sculptures fell into disrepair before a fire destroyed much of Crystal Palace
in 1936. Over time, they were obscured by foliage and as the Second World War
occupied the attention of London, the park was largely forgotten until 1952
when a restoration of both sculptures and park was carried out.
They were classed as Grade II listed buildings in 1973 and
in 2002, the display was
fully restored and upgraded to Grade I in 2007. They have a registered
charity dedicated to their long-term preservation which proudly claims that the
site now attracts as many visitors per year as it did when the dinosaurs first
raised their heads… metaphorically, of course.
Clancy's comment: Mm ... Can't say that I've ever had any interest in dinosaurs, but each to their own.
I'm ....
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