George Baxter’s Print of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs (ca. 1854) — The Public Domain Review

However triumphant Owen and his guests may have been, his creations may look a little off to our contemporary eyes. Hawkins’ reconstructions are not identical to those we are familiar with today. Some guides to the park describe the dinosaurs as “frog-like” (though accompanying illustrations are, perhaps, more frog-like than the actual sculptures). In fact, the concrete beasts look a good bit more mammalian than our modern images of them — just as they do in Baxter’s print. Many stand erect on trunk-like legs, with sturdy paws and massive, thick-set heads. This appearance, historian Martin Rudwick argues, reflects Owen’s own anti-evolutionary beliefs (anti-Lamarckian, that is, given that Darwin would not burst onto the scene until 1859). Owen argued that ancient animals like the iguanodon, far from being primitive and reptilian, had more “advanced” anatomy: if that was true, life forms had not progressed over time, as the Lamarckians would have it. The Crystal Palace dinosaurs — hulking and “rhinoceros-like” — reflected these theoretical commitments.