Crystal Palace

The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs are a series of sculptures of dinosaurs and extinct mammals located in Crystal Palace, London. Made in 1852 and exposed in 1854, they were the first dinosaur sculptures in the world, pre-dating the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by six years. Designed and sculpted by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins.

The Crystal Palace was a cast-iron and plate-glass building originally erected in Hyde Park, London, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. More than 14,000 exhibitors from around the world gathered in the Palace to display examples of the latest technology developed in the Industrial Revolution. Because of the recent invention of the cast plate glass method in 1848, which allowed for large sheets of cheap but strong glass, it was at the time the largest amount of glass ever seen in a building and astonished visitors with its clear walls and ceilings that did not require interior lights, thus a "Crystal Palace".

After the exhibition, the building was rebuilt in next to Sydenham Hill, an affluent South London suburb full of large villas. It stood there from 1854 until its destruction by fire in 1936.