The Crystal Palace Park Dinosaurs

 

 A detail of an Iguanodon

Continuing my investigation of Crystal Palace Park, having made observations on its geology and the building stones used for the terraces, I arrived at the north-east end of the Lower Lake, where an information panel provides an introduction to the Grade I Listed Geological Court – an internationally important collection of palaeontological sculptures that were made by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins between 1852 and 1854, with advice by Sir Richard Owen. 

 

An interpretation panel

A quick search on Google shows that these unique representations of vertebrates, from the late Permian to the Quaternary periods, have been studied in great depth over the years. Relying mainly on the Friends of Crystal Palace Park Dinosaurs website for my information, here are a just a selection of photos from and hour and a half spent wandering around the Geological Court.

 

Megaloceros with a broken horn.

My first view was of Megaloceros, or the Irish Elk, which I had first encountered at the Sedgwick Museum in Cambridge, during my free time on a field trip with the Heart of England language school, and I was saddened to see that one of its horns was broken - just one of the problems for the conservation of this unique educational resource.

 

A Megaloceros family

Various artificial strata have been laid out on the various islands, to represent the geological age of the sculptures that are set upon them. Although I didn’t notice it at the time, I have since become aware that the plinth to one of these is made from Pleistocene to Holocene Thames gravel. 

 

Palaeotherium and Anoplotherium

 

Moving on to Tertiary Island, I encountered Palaeotherium and Anoplotherium, which lived in the Eocene period. When growing up in London and visiting both the Natural History Museum and the Geology Museum very often, I was very interested in the various fossils on display, but I had never heard of these mammals before. 

 

Mosasaurus

From a distance, I could get a view of the Mosasaurus at the water’s edge, which lived 70 to 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period, is the only deliberately incomplete restoration in the entire Geological Court, comprising just a head and neck and with a single flipper. This is sometimes attributed to its sculptor not having enough anatomical information, as the skull was the only fossil material available at the time. 

 

A detail of Mosasaurus

Although the sculptures made the most of the scientific information available at the time, many of the anatomical reconstructions are now considered to be very inaccurate, with the depictions of the Iguanodons receiving much attention – particularly the bone that was once considered to be a horn on the nose, but which later discoveries suggest it to be a thumb spike. 

 

The four footed Iguanodon

The two models of Iguanodon also reflect conflicting ideas in the 1850’s about its stance, with one being firmly four footed like an elephant, with another representation showing it sprawling on a tree trunk like an iguana. Later fossil finds had shown that these had well developed powerful hind limbs and less well developed forelimbs but, according to the Natural History Museum, it is considered that Iguanadon was predominantly a quadruped.

 

The sprawling Iguanodon

I could only see the rear of the early Cretaceous Hylaeosaurus, with its spiny back, from a distance. Along with Iguanodon and Megalosaurus, it is one of only the three genera at Crystal Palace Park that would be actualy be classified as a dinosaur. It was also the first armoured ankylosaur known and was discovered by Gideon Mantell, who is probably best known for his work with Iguanadon bones and teeth.

 

Hylaeosaurus

The mid Jurassic Megalosaurus, which features in the opening lines of Bleak House by Charles Dickens, is again now considered to have been a bipedal dinosaur with shortened forearms and the humped shoulders discounted, on the basis of subsequent fossil finds. 

 

Megalosaurus

I could only get a view of the head and neck of one of the two remaining Pterosaurs at a distance, with my zoom lens, but it was partly obscured by vegetation and I didn't get a very good impression of it. These ‘winged lizards’ existed from 228 – 66 million years ago, with the Pterodactylus cuvieri on display being from the late Cretaceous period. 

A Pteranosaur

There is a much better view of the marine reptiles, which are the sculptures at the Geological Court that I am most familiar with, having seen many specimens at the Natural History Museum as a child and later after I had qualified and worked as a geologist.

 

Ichthyosaurs

The three species of early Jurassic Ichthyosaurs are based on the discoveries by Mary Anning at Lyme Regis in the early C19, which are also on display at the Natural History Museum, but I don’t recount seeing the crocodile like Teleosaurus before. 

 

A Teleosaurus

Continuing with my observations of the sculptures on Secondary Island, the models of the three early Jurassic species of Plesiosaurs are depicted as having long snake like necks, but modern studies of anatomy suggest that were not flexible enough to form tight curves. 

 

A detail of a Plesiosaur

Moving on along the path, I next encountered three sculptures that depict different species of the Triassic Labyrinthodon, which are thought to have been primitive amphibians. They were portrayed as giant frog-like creatures, with a mix of smooth and warty skin, but modern thinking considers them to be more like salamanders and they had a well developed tail. 

 

Labyrinthodon

Next to the Labyrinthodon sculptures, there are two examples of the late Permian Dicynodon whose fossil remains have been interpreted by palaeontologists as ‘mammal like reptiles’. Most fossils at the time of the reconstruction were heads, which showed the tusks and the horny beak, but the turtle like body was conjectural.

 

Dicynodon

I took a very quick diversion to take a look at what I thought was a large stone sculpture, set higher up on what appears to be a natural gravel terrace, which children were playing on. According to the website, this is the original head of the Hylaeosaurus and that the one on the in situ dinosaur is a glass fibre replica.

 

The original head of the Hylaeosaurus

Walking around the south side of the Lower Lake, I finished my brief exploration of the Geological Court by photographing the Megatherium, which is also known as the giant ground sloth. I had got glimpses of the back of its head earlier on my walk through the Geological Court, but this giant creature, which is the one sculpture made from solid limestone, was meant to be seen from this vantage point.

 

Megatherium