Missing Crystal Palace 'dinosaur' replaced in park


Liz Jackson - BBC News
Mon, July 3, 2023 

A life-size re-creation of one of the missing Crystal Palace Dinosaurs has been unveiled in Crystal Palace Park in south-east London.

The sculpture replicates the original version of a Palaeotherium magnum - an extinct mammal distantly related to horses - which disappeared from the park in the 1960s.

The Natural History Museum said it was the first time in 20 years that anyone had attempted to replace a lost sculpture at the site.

It comes as an architectural firm has been appointed to oversee a project as part of Bromley Council's 'regeneration plan' for the park.

Palaeoartist Bob Nicholls collaborated with scientists and historians at the Natural History Museum and University of Portsmouth to create the new piece.

Part of the complex work involved making a wooden, polystyrene and chicken wire model of the mammal before it was covered in clay and moulded in fibreglass.

The project was funded by the new Crystal Palace Park Trust and the Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs.

Professor Adrian Lister, expert in palaeo mammals at the Natural History Museum said the Palaeotherium magnum lived on earth some 44.5 - 33.5 million years ago and was roughly 6ft 6in (2m) long and 3ft 3in (1m) high - the size of a "small, chunky pony".

Ellinor Michel, evolutionary biologist at the museum and chair of the Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs said the sculptures are "of huge historic and scientific importance".

The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs are made up of more than 30 sculptures of extinct animals and almost 40 geological displays.

They were created between 1852 and 1855 by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, a natural history artist, and represent the first major worldwide outreach project of science.

According to the Natural History Museum only four of the statues are strictly dinosaurs, with others representing marine and flying reptiles as well as crocodilians, amphibians, and mammals like palaeotherium magnum.

The original Grade I-listed dinosaur sculptures and surrounding land are now classed as the highest priority on Historic England's heritage at-risk register due to their poor condition and "immediate risk of further rapid deterioration".

The unveiling follows a National Lottery Heritage Fund award of £304,000 in development funding for Crystal Palace Park in March, ahead of a wider £5m regeneration project award.

It also comes amid Bromley Council's regeneration plan for the park - including a £17.5m project to restore the park’s original features such as the remaining Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, the Italian Terraces and the site of the former palace itself.

Following a competition held by Bromley Council, architects HTS Design have been announced as the lead consultants for the current stage of the project.

Councillor Yvonne Bear from Bromley Council said: “I know local residents and visitors will be eager to see progress being made on the headline restoration works including in this next stage, but there is also much more work going on around this to ensure that a long-term model is created for the park, that firmly connects its heritage to the local community and economy.”

Palaeotherium

Scientific name: Palaeotherium, meaning ‘ancient beast’

Common name: Palaeotherium

Lived: In warm temperate to subtropical forests in Britain and mainland Europe

When: During the Eocene, 44.5 - 33.5 million years ago

Size: Palaeotherium was a relatively small mammal, standing around 75cm at the shoulder on average, although the largest species were the size of a small horse.

Diet: Palaeotherium was a plant-eating browser, mostly consuming leaves and fruit.

Statues: Two small tapir-like statues, one sitting (Plagiolophus minor) and one standing (Palaeotherium medium), on the Tertiary island close to the water, also near the Anoplotherium.

The sitting model lost its head and was fitted with a replacement in the late twentieth century, but unfortunately it is once again headless. We also suspect that the replacement head was not an accurate reconstruction of the original, as it differs somewhat from older images of Plagiolophus minor. We hope to eventually replace the head with a version that was more faithful to the original.

While doing recent archival research, FCPD also discovered nineteenth century documentation and photographs from as recently as 1963 that indicate a third larger, pony-sized model (Palaeotherium magnum) once existed that was distinct from the surviving models (see photos below) but sadly there is no record of where this is.

However, FCPD has embarked upon an exciting new project to restore Palaeotherium magnum in the park. The replica model will be built by the palaeoartist Bob Nicholls and unveiled in the summer of 2023.

Fun facts: Palaeotherium is one of the historically oldest known fossil animals, having been studied by the famous French anatomist Georges Cuvier in the early 1800s.

The Crystal Palace statues vs modern scientific reconstructions: The first fossil skeletons of Palaeotherium that were recovered from France were nearly complete, so its anatomy was known in fairly good detail from early on. However, it’s somewhat difficult to evaluate the Palaeotherium models against the science of their day because of modifications that have been made to them since their original installation, including a replaced head on the sitting model and an apparently lost, larger third model.

It is a distant relative to the horse, although early scholars thought it was a tapir-like animal, so depicted it with a short trunk (proboscis). The sculptor, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, evidently followed this trend with his standing model, giving it a long, tapir-like face, an arched back, a podgy, creased torso recalling that of the Malayan tapir, and short, round ears. He opted to give the feet a more horse-like appearance however, which is appropriate.

The sitting Palaeotherium model also has a tapir-like body, but it lacks the obvious creases of the other surviving model - perhaps it was meant to be a different species. The original head of this sculpture (replaced in the twentieth century) was certainly radically different in being much shorter and smaller, and not bearing strong resemblance to any living animal.

Stranger still is the lost model (below left in the photograph), which is far removed from anything especially tapir-like except its short trunk. It was about the size of a small horse, and this almost certainly labels it as Palaeotherium magnum, another species that was well illustrated in literature of the early 1800s. This large sculpture has features recalling African bush elephants, including a concave back, wrinkled skin, stocky limbs, a deep, short face and a prominent brow. This apparent referencing of elephants may seem unusual but in the early 1800s many scientists thought it to be part of the same (now obsolete) group ‘Pachydermata’ that included elephants, rhinoceros and hippo.

Photograph of the Palaeotherium, 1958 from McCarthy and Gilbert (1994). It shows a larger standing model (Palaeotherium magnum) that no longer exists at the site, but will be replaced by a replica in the summer of 2023.

Overall however, the Crystal Palace models are not far off how we regard this creature today: a browsing hoofed herbivore that must have looked something like a tapir or small, stunted horse. However, the inclusion of trunks on the models is contestable as its fossils lack many features associated with having a proboscis.

The species illustrated in the modern reconstruction below is the larger Palaeotherium magnum.

© Copyright Mark Witton 2019

This reconstruction has been reproduced by kind permission of the very talented palaeoartist Mark Witton whose work you can read about, support and buy.