Crystal Palace Dinosaurs (1854): The First Life-Size Models

The Crystal Palace dinosaurs are a group of Victorian sculptures of extinct animals, unveiled in 1854 in the park around the rebuilt Crystal Palace at Sydenham in south London. Created by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins with advice from the anatomist Richard Owen, they were the first life-size models of dinosaurs anywhere in the world. Though scientifically outdated, they remain a landmark in the public understanding of prehistory.

Background: the Crystal Palace moves to Sydenham

The Crystal Palace was the vast glass and iron hall designed by Joseph Paxton for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park. After the exhibition closed, a private company bought the building and rebuilt it, enlarged, on Sydenham Hill in south London. Queen Victoria opened the new palace on 10 June 1854.

The company wanted the palace and its grounds to educate as well as entertain. Inside were courts showing the art and architecture of past civilisations. Outside, in the landscaped park, the plan included a display of geology and of the animals of the distant past, arranged in the order in which they had lived.

Building the models

Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, a sculptor and illustrator of natural history, was commissioned in 1852. Richard Owen, the leading anatomist in Britain, who had coined the word “dinosaur” in 1842, advised him on the shape and posture of each creature, based on the fossils then known.

Hawkins worked in a studio in the park. Each model was built over a framework of brick and iron, then covered in concrete or cement and sculpted, while smaller ones were cast. Many were large: the Iguanodons are around 10 metres long.

The finished group included more than 30 sculptures of about 15 kinds of animal. They were placed on three islands in a lake, with older animals on one island and more recent ones on others. Artificial rock layers, including a model coal seam and limestone cliffs, showed the geological strata in which their fossils were found.

The dinner in the Iguanodon

To win publicity, Hawkins held a famous dinner on New Year’s Eve 1853 inside the mould used to make one of the Iguanodon models. About twenty guests attended, with Richard Owen traditionally said to have been seated in the head of the animal; most were scientists and supporters of the project. The guests dined on several courses and gave toasts late into the evening. Invitations were written on mock pterodactyl wings, according to accounts of the evening. The event was illustrated in the Illustrated London News in January 1854 and became one of the most celebrated moments in the history of palaeontology.

The animals and their errors

Only four of the sculptures, of three kinds, represent dinosaurs: two Iguanodons, a Megalosaurus and a Hylaeosaurus. The others include ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, pterosaurs, a Mosasaurus, giant amphibians called Labyrinthodon, early mammals such as Palaeotherium, the giant ground sloth Megatherium and the “Irish elk” Megaloceros.

Owen pictured dinosaurs as heavy, upright-legged reptiles, more like mammals than lizards. As a result the Iguanodons resemble huge rhinoceroses, with a thumb spike placed on the nose as a horn, and Megalosaurus walks on four legs. Later discoveries, including the complete Iguanodon skeletons found in Belgium in 1878, showed these features to be wrong. The Mosasaurus was finished only at the front, with the back of its body hidden in the water.

Other models have aged better. The giant deer Megaloceros and the Ice Age mammals were based on well-preserved skeletons and look broadly correct today, and the ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs capture the general shape of the animals, even if details such as the plesiosaurs’ flexible, swan-like necks are now doubted. Some of the sculptures, including the ichthyosaurs, were placed half out of the water on the shore, reflecting a belief that these marine reptiles might haul themselves onto land like seals.

Seen in their own time, however, the models were a bold and careful attempt to show the newest science to the public, and they were a great popular success.

Later history

The company reduced funding in 1855, and plans for further models, including mammoths and a mastodon, were abandoned. Hawkins went on to work in the United States, where he helped mount the skeleton of Hadrosaurus in Philadelphia in 1868.

The Crystal Palace itself was destroyed by fire on 30 November 1936, but the sculptures survived. Over the decades they suffered from neglect, weathering and vandalism, and some pieces were lost or moved. A major restoration was completed in 2002, and the sculptures were upgraded from Grade II to Grade I listed status in 2007. In 2020 they were placed on Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register, and further conservation work has followed. A charity, the Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, campaigns for their care.

Restorers have had to work with fragile Victorian materials, replacing missing jaws, teeth and tails, while trying to keep as much original fabric as possible. In recent years, modern techniques such as digital scanning have been used to help recreate lost or damaged parts of individual models. Today the sculptures are valued both as historic monuments and as a record of how the science of palaeontology looked in its early years.

Science and showmanship

The models were part of a larger Victorian belief that public displays could teach ordinary people about science. Many visitors arrived by the new railway line to Sydenham, and for a small fee they could walk past a sequence of lost worlds, from ancient coal forests to Ice Age mammals. Guidebooks, including a booklet by Owen, explained what they were seeing.

Hawkins saw himself as both scientist and artist. He studied the fossils and the skeletons of living animals closely, and he produced posters, small models and lectures to spread the new knowledge. His work helped create a lasting image of dinosaurs as huge, powerful beasts, an image that has shaped films, books and toys ever since.

The project was also expensive and commercially risky. The Crystal Palace Company struggled financially for much of its history, and the money spent on the models was hard to justify once the novelty faded. Hawkins never completed the full series he had planned.

Key people

• Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (1807–1894): sculptor and natural history illustrator who designed and built the models.
• Richard Owen (1804–1892): anatomist who coined the word dinosaur and advised on the reconstructions.
• Joseph Paxton (1803–1865): architect of the Crystal Palace and designer of its Sydenham gardens.
• David Thomas Ansted: geologist who advised on the artificial rock strata in the park.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1842: Richard Owen names the Dinosauria.
• 1851: The Great Exhibition is held in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park.
• 1852: Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins begins work on the models at Sydenham.
• 1853, 31 December: The dinner is held in the Iguanodon mould.
• 1854, 10 June: Queen Victoria opens the rebuilt Crystal Palace; the models go on show.
• 1855: Funding is cut and further models are abandoned.
• 1936, 30 November: The Crystal Palace burns down; the sculptures survive.
• 2002: A major restoration of the sculptures is completed.
• 2007: The sculptures are listed at Grade I.

Why it matters

The Crystal Palace dinosaurs were the first attempt to show the public, at full size, what extinct animals might have looked like. They mark the moment when dinosaurs entered popular culture, and their mistakes are now valued as a record of how scientific ideas change over time.