Stone giants in London's park

The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs might give you a feeling of deja vu if you think you’ve seen the gigantic stone creatures before. In 1854, they captured imaginations across the world - but not for the right reasons. The prehistoric giants standing in Crystal Palace Park in South London may look like the first dinosaur sculptures, but they are erroneous to a glorious extent. The 21 life-sized sculptures designed by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, under the scientific direction of Sir Richard Owen, were commissioned in 1852 to accompany the Crystal Palace Exhibition building, a structure relocated from the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park.

The models were unveiled in 1854, as the first-ever life-sized models of extinct animals. Fast forward to the 21st century, many of the original sculptures are missing - the ones that were dismantled and sold for scrap are now found in private collections. However, in 2001, the display was fully restored with large blocks of Derbyshire limestone, creating replicas for the missing sculptures.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons