Part III: Restoration
The dinosaurs underwent extensive restoration in 2001 and 2002. In the autumn of 2003, I went back to take some more pictures with my new L'Espion mini digital camera... |
Plate 15. Nice close-up shot of the big Icthyosaur, which also demonstrates how the island has changed. Many of the trees have been cut down, and replicas of the original nineteenth-century artificial ferns have been restored. Apparently there are security cameras in place to protect the dinosaurs, but they're not obtrusive, which is nice. | ||
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Plate 11. The Iguanodons; note that an artificial fern has been used to shore up the weak forepaw of the sitting iguanodon. The paint job is much lighter, which is the one thing which jarred on me a bit; I liked the old vibrant colours. | ||
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Plate 14. The marine animals, with the restored Oolite pterodactyls. None of the pictures I took of the pterodactyls came out well, but this gives you the idea. Apparently they, and one of the Anoplotheria, are all fibreglass, modeled after old photographs. | ||
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Plate 12. Yay! The mammals have been restored! Here's a lovely shot of the Anoplotherium group. That's the communis on the left, and the gracile on the far right. Behind them is the Dinosaur Island. | ||
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Plate 13. I also finally got a shot at the Megatherium. The children's zoo has now been razed and a walkway put on the peninsula, so you can walk around and admire the mammals up close. | ||
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Plate 16. A little paleotherium rooting around in the undergrowth. Included to make up for the rubbish shot of the unrestored animal, and because it's so cute it makes your teeth ache. |
| Due to the efforts
of many people (including a number of visitors to this site), Bromley
Council's attempt to put a multiplex on the Crystal Palace site has been
halted. Thanks to all of you who lent your support. Thank you for joining us and we hope that those of you who survived enjoyed your visit. To visit the website of the Crystal Palace Foundation, click here. For an interesting article about the history of the dinosaurs and Hawkins, click here. While I'm at it, I'd like to acknowledge my indebtedness to (and shamelessly plug) Martin Rudwick's Scenes From Deep Time (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) and Steve McCarthy and Mick Gilbert's Crystal Palace Dinosaurs (London: Crystal Palace Foundation, 1994). If you like Victorian dinosaurs, The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling (New York: Bantam, 1990) is also a fun read, and Hawkins' creatures get a tiny cameo. If you like icthyosaurs (as I do), click here for the page of an expert on the subject. Otherwise, click here to leave, and here if you want to send me a message about the dinosaurs, but remove the clever anti-spam device first. Come again soon.... All photographs (excepting the Jurassic Park screen capture) are copyright Fiona Moore 1999-2003. If you do anything with them, please acknowledge the source (and send me an e-mail if you can; I'd like to keep track of what these fellows do on their days off). After all, it wasn't you who spent several cumulative hours scrambling around muddy hillsides... | |||||||