The
dream that died – a 19th-Century engraving depicting Hawkins's
planned Palaeozoic Museum for New York City; how magnificent it would have been
(public domain)
In Parts 1 and 2 of this ShukerNature
blog article (click here
and here
to access them), we paid a virtual, verbal visit to the ancient mammals and especially
the enormous dinosaurs and other prehistoric herpetological creatures that are
immortalized at Dinosaur Court in Crystal Palace Park, southeast London, via a
series of artistically magnificent (albeit nowadays palaeontologically
inaccurate) statues.
These were the first such statues ever created
– dating back to 1853/4 – and were reconstructed by eminent British sculptor and
artist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins under the guidance of Britain's foremost zoologist
and palaeontologist at that time, Prof. Sir Richard Owen. Today, we turn our
attention to the ongoing peril faced by these monumental wonders from a deadly
combination of environmental and vandal-induced vicissitudes, as well as
recalling Hawkins's tragically ill-fated American adventure.
Benjamin
Waterhouse Hawkins (public domain)
In recent times, the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs
have hit the news headlines for a variety of different reasons – some good,
some not so good. Sadly, the most notable instance falls into the latter
category. In May 2020, media reports worldwide revealed the shocking news that
the nose and jaw tips of the magnificent Megalosaurus
dinosaur statue had broken off. Photos accompanying these reports presented in
stark close-up detail the severity of the damage, but opinions were mixed as to
its cause. The Metropolitan Police were treating it as vandalism (and there are
plenty of precedents with these statues to explain this view), whereas some
historians noted that the nose and jaw tips had broken off along pre-existing
fracture lines, thus suggesting that it may have happened naturally.
Indeed, when I read the reports I was
reminded of a brief but prophetic observation made in a Tetrapod Zoology blog article of 11 December 2018 by British
palaeontologist Dr Darren Naish following his visit to Dinosaur Court in
September 2018 during its annual Open Day weekend there in which visitors were
allowed the rare privilege of stepping forth onto the actual islands where
Hawkins's statues stand, thereby enabling them to be viewed at much closer
range than is normally possible. In his article, he stated: "…sections of
the megalosaur’s nose look like they could fall off at any moment".
Hawkins's
monumental Megalosaurus statue,
photographed by me during my visit to Crystal Palace Park on 22 April 2010,
when its nose and jaw tips were still intact (© Dr Karl Shuker)
Happily, however, in May 2021 Hawkins's Megalosaurus statue was restored to its
former glory when it received a specially-created 'prosthetic jaw' and 22 teeth.
The intricate restoration work that had created and fitted them had been financed
by a grant from Historic England's Culture Recovery Fund plus support from Bromley Council and donations generated via
fundraising carried out by the charity FOCPD – Friends of Crystal Palace
Dinosaurs (more about this sterling organization later).
Certainly, following direct outdoor exposure
to the elements for almost 170 years, many of Hawkins's statues, especially the
larger ones, sport a distressing array of fractures, fissures, cracks, and
breaks, and are in danger of losing toes, tails, teeth, and antlers. The distal
region of the tail of his Hylaeosaurus dinosaur
statue, for example, is already severed from the remainder of it. And at much
the same time as the Megalosaurus
disfigurement took place in May 2020, the antlers of the two Irish elk stags
were also damaged, although this may have been due to the prevailing high winds.
Also
snapped by me during my 2010 visit to Crystal Palace Park were these three
photographs of Hawkins's two magnificent Irish elk stags with still-intact
antlers (© Dr Karl Shuker)
Ironically, less than three months
previously, in late February 2020, Historic England had announced that the
Crystal Palace Dinosaurs were being added to its Heritage at Risk Register.
Speaking of Hylaeosaurus: many years after its statue had been created by
Hawkins, the head either fell off of its own accord or had to be removed
because its great weight was causing the statue's neck to snap (accounts
differ), and a lightweight fibreglass replica was added in its place. Happily,
however, the original head was preserved, and can still be seen, mounted upon a
special inset plaque on the ground, but sited some distance away from the rest
of this statue.
The mounted
original head of Hawkins's Hylaeosaurus
statue (© MrsEllacott/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 4.0 licence)
In my view, however, undoubtedly the most
devastating damage wrought upon any of Hawkins's Crystal Palace statues was suffered
by the pair of smaller, Oolite pterosaurs mentioned by me yesterday in Part 2
of this ShukerNature blog article. After being on display in addition to the more
famous larger pair of pterosaurs for approximately 80 years, they were
destroyed sometime during the 1930s; it has been claimed that they were used as
target practice when the grounds of Crystal Palace Park were being temporarily
utilized as barracks. During the major restoration work that took place at
Dinosaur Court in 2002, however, a gorgeous pair of golden-gleaming fibreglass
replicas were installed, having been specially created by sculptor John Warne
in consultation with geologist Peter Doyle and Morton Partnership. Tragically,
however, they were heinously destroyed just three years later, in 2005, when
vandals kicked them over and also stole their smashed fragments.
Nothing more was heard about the Oolite pterosaur
replicas for almost a decade, until a blog article by Joe Cain uploaded on 18
July 2014 to the Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs website sensationally
revealed that their fragments had been discovered just a week previously.
Although for security reasons their location was not disclosed, Joe stated that
he and two colleagues had been given special access to the fragments, which
enabled them to be counted and their condition assessed. Sadly, most were in
poor condition, but he felt that there was enough for future work to be
initiated at some stage. As for the two larger, Cretaceous pterosaurs, they
have suffered a degree of damage too, including much of the long slender jaws
of one of them having broken off in recent years (I was fortunate enough to see
both of them fully intact back in 2010).
A
19th-Century illustration of Crystal Palace Park's Dinosaur Court, which depicts the original pair of
small, subsequently-destroyed Oolite pterosaurs, arrowed (public domain)
Yet even the desecration of the Oolite pterosaurs
almost pales into insignificance when compared to the nightmare of what
happened to all of Hawkins's New York statues. Despite the initial success of
his Dinosaur Court at London's Crystal Palace Park, the cost of the statues'
creation had been prohibitive (approximately £13,750 – an enormous sum back in
the 1850s). Consequently, in mid-1855 the Directors of the Crystal Palace
Company, which had purchased the palace itself, had funded its removal from
Hyde Park and its reassembling at Penge following the end of the Great
Exhibition, and had also financed Hawkins's creation of all of the statues
there, refused to provide him with any further funding to reconstruct some
additional statues of extinct Cenozoic beasts that he'd wanted to display on the
Court's Tertiary Island.
These were believed to include New
Zealand's ostrich-like giant moa Dinornis,
the Mauritius dodo, the antlered giraffid Sivatherium,
a South American glyptodont (a giant armadillo-like armoured mammal with a
fearsome mace-like tail), some snakes and turtles, plus a woolly mammoth, and
at least one other prehistoric pachyderm too (variously claimed to be a Mastodon or a Deinotherium).
An
amusing cartoon in an issue of the English satirical magazine Punch from 1855, lampooning the greatly-promoted
educational benefit of Hawkins's Crystal Palace Park dinosaur statues (public
domain)
Nevertheless, buoyed by the success of
his existing statues at Crystal Park Palace, Hawkins subsequently launched into
an even more ambitious project following a transatlantic invitation sent to him
in May 1868 from Charles Green, the administrator of the Board of Commissioners
of Central Park in New York City, USA. Green was well aware of how lucrative and
educational the Crystal Palace dinosaurs had proved to be, attracting each year
numerous paying visitors anxious to gaze upon and learn all about these
prehistoric goliaths. So he offered Hawkins the opportunity to establish in
Central Park a comparable attraction, but this time in the form of a unique
museum that would house a diverse range of new life-sized statues, with
especial emphasis upon prehistoric creatures of the New World.
Hawkins readily agreed to do so, dubbing this
major new project the Palaeozoic Museum. Among the statues that he planned to
produce for it were ground sloths, glyptodonts, mastodonts, and the American
plesiosaur Elasmosaurus, as well as bipedal
representations of the American herbivorous duck-billed dinosaur Hadrosaurus and carnivorous tyrannosaurid
dinosaur Laelaps [now Dryptosaurus], plus the Eurasian giant
deer or Irish elk Megaloceros giganteus, a species
that he had already constructed for London's Dinosaur Court, and also New
Zealand's giant moa Dinornis, which he
had been prevented from constructing for the Court.
Ensconced
within New York City's Central Park, Hawkins's studio in 1869, containing Hadrosaurus and Irish elk statues
(public domain)
Hawkins set up a workshop studio in
Central Park, and by early 1871 he had created several statues and the moulds
for several more when disaster struck. One fateful evening in spring of that
same year, a team of brutish despoilers broke into his studio, with what has traditionally been believed to be the
blessing of 'Boss'
William Marcy Tweed – an extremely rich, influential mobster in all but name. Tweed had stealthily gained control over much
of New York City, including the finances of the Park, having infiltrated its
Board via several corrupt Commissioners loyal to him, but according to traditional belief he had no intention
of funding the museum's establishment (being neither a fan of Hawkins in particular
nor of fossils in general). So his covertly-hired team's specified task was to
smash, destroy, remove, and bury every statue, mould, and sketch that they
could find there – a despicable crime that they carried out like palaeontological
Luddites with diabolical zeal and efficiency, duly ending any prospect of Hawkins
and Green founding their Palaeozoic Museum.
[UPDATE: You will have noticed, however, that when blaming Tweed for this destruction, I have twice highlighted that this is the traditional belief regarding it. In reality, however, a revelatory re-examination of the salient facts, published in a May 2023 Proceedings of the Geologists' Association paper authored by Victoria Coules of Bristol's Department of History of Art and palaeontologist Prof. Michael Benton of Bristol's School of Earth Sciences, exposes the culprit not to have been Tweed at all. Instead, the villain in question was none other than Henry Hilton, Treasurer and VP of Central Park. It turns out that Hilton made the fatal decision at a specific meeting that the statues and moulds should be destroyed, and it was he who sent out the very next day the team responsible for doing so. But why? Apparently, Hilton was a very strange, eccentric character who is already known to historians for a number of other bizarre, senseless, disreputable acts, so this wanton vandalism is entirely in keeping with his notorious reputation.]
An
oil painting by Hawkins depicting New Zealand giant moas, Dinornis (public domain)
Returning to England dejected and
rejected, Hawkins spent the remainder of his days painting wildlife, dying in
1894, his American dream shattered, unfulfilled. Happily, however, in London's
Crystal Palace Park his visionary creations live on (in all but the most
literal sense!).
Moreover, today they have a major ally
and protector, in the shape of a superb charity organization called Friends of
Crystal Palace Dinosaurs or FOCPD (be sure to visit its official website here for full details concerning its founding,
its aims, volunteering, donating, and so much more). FOCPD is enthusiastically
supported by an eclectic range of members united by their love for Hawkins's
iconic creations, drawing not just from the scientific community but from every
walk of life. One of FOCPD's biggest supporters, who has extensively publicized
on social media its worthy cause, is none other than Hampstead-born Saul
Hudson, better known today as celebrated Guns N' Roses rock guitarist Slash.
FOCPD was specifically founded in 2013 to
promote the longterm conservation of these statues plus the larger surrounding
geological site, and its latest in a long line of major successes since then has
been to raise the very substantial sum of money (approximately £70,000) required
to design, construct, and then safely secure in place a robust lockable swing
bridge, dubbed the Dino Bridge. This will exclusively enable FOCPD's workers,
volunteers, and others involved in vital restoration and maintenance work here to
access the islands whenever needed, but at all other times it can be locked
away to prevent would-be intruders and trespassers from using it to access these
statue sanctuaries.
On 13 January 2021, the Dino Bridge was
formally installed, thereby marking the beginning of a major new phase in
FOCPD's ongoing objective of protecting and preserving Hawkins's priceless,
irreplaceable legacy – and, in so doing, maintaining interest in it. This in
turn ensures not only the continuing physical survival of his creations but also
that their unique scientific, historical, and artistic significance is fully
understood and appreciated by current and future generations.
A
view of Dinosaur Court in London's Crystal Palace Park (© Dr Karl Shuker)
For what is all too often not realized (yet
is absolutely crucial to remember here) is that whereas in comparison to
today's currently-accepted palaeontological reconstructions of the prehistoric
beasts represented by them, Hawkins's statues are undeniably inaccurate and
thoroughly outdated, they are nonetheless exceedingly accurate representations of the very limited fossil remains and
attendant knowledge concerning them that were available to him back when he
created them almost 170 years ago. Indeed, it is even probably fair to say that
relatively speaking, Hawkins's statues are actually more precise life
restorations of the fossils available to him and Owen for study than today's
life restorations are of the vast array of fossils available to modern-day
sculptors and artists. This is because even such visually insignificant yet
taxonomically highly significant features as tooth structure were diligently
replicated by Hawkins from the fossils available to him for study. So, viewed
from that perspective, i.e. strictly in context, his Victorian statues not only
were the earliest but also may well be the most faithful three-dimensional reconstructions
of dinosaurs and other antiquated animals ever created.
This is surely a most fitting testimonial
to the man who was the very first person to resurrect like a veritable
naturalist of necromancy the long-dead, long-buried monsters from the vast
mausoleum of our world's hitherto-unsuspected prehistoric past.
A tenacious
testament to a uniquely appealing twinning of science with art – Hawkins's
pioneering palaeontological statues of various aquatic prehistoric creatures at
Crystal Palace Park (© CGPGrey-Wikipedia – CC BY 3.0 licence)
For further details concerning the
history of Hawkins's Dinosaur Court statues and for very extensive, meticulous
analyses of their morphological accuracy when compared with our present-day
knowledge of the prehistoric creatures that they are based upon, I heartily
recommend Crystal Palace Dinosaurs: The
Story of the World's First Prehistoric Sculptures (1994), a fascinating,
lavishly-illustrated book written and researched by Steve McCarthy, designed
and produced by Mick Gilbert; plus the excellent online blog of British
palaeontologist and palaeoartist Mark Witton (click here
to access it).
In addition, my sincere thanks for
sharing with me all manner of interesting, pertinent information go to Sam
Crehan, Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs (FOCPD), Mandy Holloway, Dr Darren
Naish, Bob Skinner, and Sebastian Wang.
Crystal Palace Dinosaurs:
The Story of the World's First Prehistoric Sculptures
by Steve McCarthy and Mick Gilbert (© Steve McCarthy/Mick
Gilbert – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for
educational/review purposes only)
But above all, I wish to dedicate this comprehensive
3-part ShukerNature article to my late mother, Mary Shuker (1921-2013), whose
fascination with animals inspired my own and whose ever-present encouragement
and support were crucial in helping me to achieve my lifelong ambition of
becoming a zoologist. Down through the years, she had heard me speak of the
Crystal Palace Dinosaurs so often that when in 2010 I finally decided to brave
the turmoil of London's traffic and pay them a long-promised visit at Penge,
she was almost as keen to see them as I was. So naturally I took her with me,
and when traversing the long and winding public pathway on the park 'mainland'
that encircles their island sanctuaries, she enjoyed observing these immensely
impressive statues just as much as I did.
Indeed, although during the five decades
that we shared, Mom and I had travelled the world together, taking her with me to
visit and view so many exotic sights that she had always wanted to see but had
never thought that she would, the simple joy of our day among the dinosaurs of
Crystal Palace will always remain one of my most treasured memories of our life
together.
My
mother Mary Shuker with Hawkins's majestic Megalosaurus
and Megatherium statues in Crystal
Palace Park's Dinosaur Court on 22 April 2010 (© Dr Karl Shuker)
God bless you Mom, thank you for being
the best person I shall ever know – how I wish that you were still here, that
you could read and enjoy this article of mine, and remember once again, as I am
doing now, our happy time spent together in the company of its stately, stupendous
subjects.
Finally: if you haven't already perused
Parts 1 and 2 of this 3-part ShukerNature blog article on the Crystal Palace
Dinosaurs, please click here
and here
to do so.
'Jurassic
Life of Europe', an 1877 oil painting by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (public
domain)
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