The Victorians were a little goofy
I can’t believe I’ve never posted about the Crystal Palace dinosaurs, but this is the only mention I could find. Where Uncle B last lived in London was near unto Crystal Palace Park, home of the famous Crystal Palace dinosaurs.
They were sculpted in the early 1850s by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins to go with the new park. Mostly, they’re famous because of all the things he got wrong and silly, but this was the first ever effort to make a model from fossils, so that’s not really fair. Boo.
When we used to visit, the poor things were in rough shape and falling to bits, but they’ve since spent a bunch of money fixing them up. Yay!
Now English Heritage has gone and done 3D models, so you can play with them yourself. If you’ve never used Sketchfab, click on the model you want to see and give it a minute to load the model and then the texture, then:
Left mouse button and move the mouse to rotate the model around an invisible axis
Left mouse button, CTRL and move the mouse up and down to zoom in and out (or middle mouse button)
Left mouse button, SHIFT and move the mouse to pan back and forth (or right mouse button)
Left mouse button, ALT and move the mouse to move the light source around
You can find more Sketchfab controls here. I’ve spent more hours than I care to admit zooming around 3D models there. There some fantastic stuff. I even have a few of my own, but I think they’re under my civilian name.
September 19, 2023 — 6:16 pm
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