“A True Dinosaur Story in Three Ages: from a childhood Love of Art, to the monumental Dinosaur Sculptures at the Crystal Palace in England, to the Thwarted work in New York’s Central Park…it’s all here!”

How do we know what dinosaurs looked like? It takes an artist with imagination to answer this question, and Waterhouse Hawkins was an artist with imagination. Back in his time, the 1800s, scientists started to dig up dinosaur skeletons, but no one really had a good idea of what dinosaurs had looked like when alive.

Looking closely at dinosaur skeletons and modern reptiles, Waterhouse Hawkins set himself the task of showing dinosaurs as living creatures. He made a series of life-size concrete dinosaurs for the grand Crystal Palace exhibition in London in 1850; he even gave a dinner party inside one of the models! His life-size dinosaurs astounded and delighted everyone. Then he traveled to America to make some dinosaurs for Central Park in New York, but alas, he got into trouble with the mayor, who thought they cost too much and hired a gang to smash them all. But Hawkins kept working, painting dinosaur murals for museums and other buildings, and never lost his imagination.