A few months back I was in a cab – an unusual luxury – and while we were stopped at the lights the cabby turned round to me and announced that they now had the technology to make Jurassic Park happen. The technology to bring dinosaurs back to life.
He was adamant, and although I’ve not been in many London taxis, I’ve already learnt there’s no point arguing with a cabby. The man with ‘The Knowledge’ makes his cab his castle where three things are taken as gospel; The Daily Mail, Talksport, and the meter.
Although his prediction was a bit off – and thank God it was, did you see what happened at Jurassic Park? I don’t want to be nomed off the toilet – there has actually been a real life Jurassic Park sitting on the outskirts of London since 1854. Now I bet you think, like the cabby, that what I’m saying is a big pile of bull (Triceratops) shit, but it’s true and I have the proof.
But let me clarify, when I say ‘real life Jurassic Park’ I’m not talking about genetic engineering, 100 meter high electric fences, and Dickie Attenborough, I’m talking about the Victorian showpiece that is Crystal Palace Dinosaur Park. Oh you’ve never heard of it? Really? Well neither had I until the other day.
WARNING THE NEXT PARAGRAPH CONTAINS HISTORY
The park has a pretty impressive past. Commissioned in 1852 and finally completed in 1854, it contains 33 pre-historic creatures sculpted by famous natural history artist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, and based on the first discoveries of dinosaur bones. The park was the Alton Towers of its day and these sculpture were Nemesis, Oblivion, and Air all rolled into one. People from all over England and Europe flocking to see the great beasts. It was also a pretty bold thing to do, as the park opened 6 years before Darwin put the evolutionary cat amongst the creationist pigeons and published his Origin of Species.
But because it was so ahead of its time the park doesn’t contain more popular dinosaurs like your T-Rex, your Brontosaurus, and your Velociraptor. It was built before paleontology was its own science, at a time when the strange bones of long forgotten monsters emerged out of the ground and early dino-pioneers had to guess as to what the rest of the best might look like.
Working with half the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle was always going to produce a muddled up picture, and as a result the dinosaurs in the park were quickly found to be inaccurate. However, although they were mocked at the time, they now serve as an illustration that science is ever evolving, refining its knowledge and model of the world as new evidence emerges.
At the time these stone beasts were cutting edge, but now they are comic relics that could just as easily have wondered off the pages of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World.
But that’s enough build up… let’s enter Jurassic Park.
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