Tired of London, Tired of Life - A website about things to do in London

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For more regular updates, visit Tom's Britain, a new website about things to do in Britain.


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23 April 2009

Go dinosaur hunting in Crystal Palace

There was once a time before large models of extinct animals. Then, in the 1850s, famous sculptor Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins was commissioned to build first dinosaur sculptures in the world, pre-dating Charles Darwin's Origin of Species by six years.


Now branded by the Park's owners as 'the world's first theme park', there they still stand today, extensively restored in 2002 thanks to Bromley Council and a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, and awarded Grade I listed status in 2007.

The sculptures represent fifteen extinct species, though some sculptures are not quite accurate, but the anatomical errors have been retained for that Victorian authenticity (and due to their listed status).

Many thanks to Reese Stoltzfus, a South Londoner who contacted your author with this suggestion to cancel out the North London bias on this site. If you have anything you think should be included, anywhere within the M25, please do share it.

For more information on the dinosaur park, visit the wikipedia page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Palace_Dinosaurs.

Click here to view the location on a map.

^Picture from Wikipedia, under Wikimedia Commons^

2 comments:

  1. hey, I'm famous!

    glad to see you found something there. the dinosaurs sure look a bit like giant reptilian dogs now, don't they?

    ReplyDelete
  2. what is the name of this sculture

    ReplyDelete