June 21, 2011
A Visit to Dinosaur Court
An iguanodon at Dinosaur Court. Photo courtesy of Randall Irmis.
In 1854—long before galleries of robotic dinosaurs would become a common sight—artist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins unveiled a menagerie of sculpted dinosaurs that was unlike anything seen before. Constructed with the scientific guidance of anatomist Richard Owen, the massive restorations were placed in what has come to be known as “Dinosaur Court” at Sydenham Hill, South London. The site has become one of the must-see sites for paleontologists and dinosaur fans. The dinosaurs and other visions of prehistoric life Hawkins created are sorely out of date and represent Owen’s peculiar view of dinosaurs as the acme of reptilian evolution. But the site is remarkable for precisely this reason—the Dinosaur Court is a historical monument to a time when naturalists were only just beginning to become acquainted with the prehistoric creatures. (After all, Owen himself had coined the term “Dinosauria” only a little more than a decade before.)
Randall Irmis, curator of paleontology at the Utah Museum of Natural History, visited the historic landmark in 2009 and was kind enough to share a few of his photos from the trip. View our gallery for a look at the dinosaurs of Sydenham Hill, along with some of the other Mesozoic creatures Hawkins restored alongside them.
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Thanks for sharing these! Hopefully over at Laelaps you put up some of the Cenozoic critters. I urge anyone who is ever in the London area to pay a visit. The Tube literally stops across the street.
[...] the term “Dinosauria” more than two decades earlier, and South London’s “Dinosaur Court” was a popular destination. But paleontologists knew relatively little about North American [...]
[...] many paleontologists preferred to leave the bones alone. (There were some notable exceptions—such as the work of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins—but restored and reconstructed dinosaurs were nowhere near as common as today.) Even Marsh, who [...]