Before you Walked with Dinosaurs, were welcomed to Jurassic Park, or found the Lost World...basically before most Works Set in Prehistory, there were these guys.
The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs are a series of sculptures located within Crystal Palace Park in London, England. It depicts various prehistoric life as was known in Victorian times, first opened in 1854 for The Geat Exhibition at the Crystal Palace. The scultures were all done by artist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, with some technical input from noted palaeontologist of the time Sir Richard Owen.
They're also well known for a tale that a dinner party was actually held in an in-progress model of the Iguanodon.note The sculptures are still present where the Crystal Palace once stood, and spent a long time in a rather dilapidated state. They have now been restored, and are preserved in the Crystal Palace Park.
Examples of Tropes
- All Flyers Are Birds: The pterosaurs (identified as Pterodactylus cuvieri and Pterodactylus bucklandi at the time, now known as Cimoliopterus cuvieri and a nomen dubium, respectively) are restored as extremely bird-like in anatomy, despite exceptionally detailed fossils, known for nearly a century prior to the statues' construction, clearly showing otherwise.
- Amphibian at Large: The Labyrinthodon (or more properly Mastodonsaurus) are depicted as giant frogs. While it was indeed an amphibian, specifically what's called a Temnospondyl, it wasn't a frog, and looked more like a cross between a newt and an alligator.
- Anachronism Stew: Done intentionally to show the progression of life from the Palaeozoic to the Cenozoic. However, the eras are organized into specific islands and the the islands themselves further divided into more specific geological subsections, nearly all of the species on the islands still didn't coexist with each other. For instance, one subsection of the Secondary island (which represents the Mesozoic) represents the Wealden Group, from where Iguanodon and Hylaeosaurus are known. However, the Walden Group covers about 15 million years of time; in reality, Hylaeosaurus and Iguanodon were temporally separated by at least 10 million years. Given the paucity of dinosaur species known at the time, this can be forgiven.
- Animals Not to Scale: Most of the prehistoric reptile statues are ridiculously large compared to the real animals, especially the dinosaurs. The somewhat apocryphal story of a dinner party being held inside the unfinished Iguanodon model's chest cavity would be easily disproven as impossible had it been close in size to the actual animal, which would've struggled to seat even two people. The Hylaeosaurus in particular is gigantic compared to the real animal, estimated at only about four metres (thirteen feet) in length. By comparison, the prehistoric mammal statues follow the size of the real animals much more closely.
- The Artifact:
- Originally there were water systems that would make water levels rise and fall and reveal the marine reptiles, particularly the mosasaur to weasel around how it wasn't well understood at the time. This no longer happens, but they're still positioned in a way that would allow them to.
- The Megatherium statue was originally positioned as if feeding from a live tree in the park. The tree has since died so now it's just hugging a stump (interestingly, at one point the tree grew too big and actually broke the statue).
- Artifact Name: They're known as the "Crystal Palace" Dinosaurs because they were built to accompany the Crystal Palace in the 1850s, the largest glass building at the time of construction. The building completely burned to the ground in 1936, but the surrounding park and the dinosaurs statues retain the name.
- Artistic License – Paleontology: They date back to the 1850s, so of course these extinct creatures are going to have this. There's a reason the lizard-like Iguanodon with horns have become a go-to example of Science Marches On. Palaeontologist Mark Witton has an
entire series on the specific details for each creature on his own blog, but specifics and egregious examples are listed here: - The most obvious one is that all the dinosaurs are depicted as big four-legged lizards. Out of the dinosaurs present, only Hylaeosaurus even remotely resembles its real-life inspiration, at least in the sense of being a quadrupedal reptile with spiky armor.
- Dicynodon are depicted as shelled turtle-like creatures due to only being known from skull fragments in the 1850s. They were more akin to pigs in build and nature.
- The early horse Palaeotherium is depicted as being like a tapir, which it wasn't in life.
- Both them and the Megatherium also have trunk, which neither actually had. The Megatherium also has unusually small hands despite the real animal being well-known, even at the time, to have had huge claws (similar to modern sloths).
- The pterosaurs are depicted as extremely bird-like animals, with swan-like necks, small heads, wings that connect to the waist, and broad abdomens, even when fossils of the time showed they had disproportionately enormous heads relative to their bodies, much less flexible necks compared to birds, wing membranes that connected to the ankles, and relatively tiny torsos.
- Creator Provincialism: Nearly all of the species depicted are those known from fossils collected in the United Kingdom. The sole exception is the Megatherium, a South American taxon (although the British Dicynodon fossils are now considered to have belonged to different species of dicynodonts). This is presumably because palaeontology as a field was in its infancy at the time and rather insular; it would be more than a century before abundant dinosaur fossils from places like Asia and South America became well known.
- Irony: The creature that most resembles an iguana out of the creatures isn't Iguanodon, but Hylaeosaurus, complete with back spikes.
- Mammoths Mean Ice Age: Or at least would have: a mammoth and mastodon model were planned for the Cenozoic section of the park, but neither were made.
- The Marvelous Deer: The giant extinct deer Megaloceros are quite imposing due to being closer to visitors and their size.
- Non-Indicative Name: Downplayed. Although they're called the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs or the Dinosaur Court, only four of the numerous models are actually of dinosaurs. There are actually more than twice as many statues of extinct mammals than of dinosaurs! It's largely Justified considering that the number of true dinosaur genera known at the time the park was constructed could be counted on one hand, so having the majority of the models represent prehistoric species other than dinosaurs was really the only way to properly fill out the attraction.
- The Place: The painting is named after the Crystal Palace Park in London, England, where the sculptures are located.
- Prehistoric Monster: Victorian England's views of prehistory as a savage time and place does leak into the designs and presentation at times.
- Sea Monster: Quite a few are represented, specifically Plesiosaurus, Mosasaurus, the crocodile relative Teleosaurus, and ichthyosaurs Temnodontosaurus and Ichthyosaurus.
- Shown Their Work: Well, for their time at least, but a lot of research and time was given into not only all the creatures, but displays on geology and rock formations. Not all of it has aged well, needless to say.
- Trope Makers: For most Works Set in Prehistory and Palaeoart. No other works about the subject existed beforehand, at least not on the scale of it.