Abysm of Ages
Added 2025-10-05 22:22:56 +0000 UTCOn New Year's Eve, 1853, sculptor and naturalist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins hosted a dinner celebrating the Crystal Palace Dinosaur statues unveiling inside a copy of one of that statues, that of an Iguanodon. Guests included many notable scientists and fledgling paleontologists of the day, most notably Richard Owen, who coined the term Dinosaur. The resulting etchings of that night have lived on, becoming one of the more iconic images related to the Crystal Palace sculptures.
Attached is an invitation to the dinner, drawn by Hawkins himself, and a spread from the picture book The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins by Barbara Kerley and Brian Selznick.
