When the dinosaur park did finally open, crowds rushed to buy tickets. No one had ever seen anything like it! The gigantic statues amazed visitors, impressed scientists, and frightened children. The animals were just so big, and they seemed shockingly lifelike. “I was absolutely certain their eyes followed me as I passed,” one young visitor later recalled as an adult.
Although known as the Crystal Palace “dinosaurs,” only four of the statues depict members of the dinosaur family. The rest represent other types of prehistoric reptiles, amphibians, and mammals.
The statues are grouped on and around manmade islands surrounded by ponds. These groups were intended to lead visitors on a tour through time. The first group features relatively recent prehistoric mammals from roughly the Ice Age period. The stars are the towering Irish Elk and the giant ground sloth Megatherium. Hawkins planned to include a mammoth as well, but this figure was never completed.