The 1853 Dinner Inside an Iguanodon That Made Dinosaurs Famous

As a child many of us were riveted by dinosaurs — their immense scale, strange anatomy and the dramatic idea of their disappearance. Few realize that the idea of dinosaurs as a distinct group is a relatively recent invention: the name Dinosauria was coined in 1842, and popular awareness followed soon after.

The theatrical moment that helped bring dinosaurs into Victorian living rooms came less than a decade later. In 1853, sculptor Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins and paleontologist Richard Owen staged a publicity dinner inside a hollow life‑size reconstruction of an Iguanodon. Twenty‑one notable scientists and patrons attended the eight‑course banquet on New Year’s Eve — an event widely reported and remembered as a turning point in public engagement with paleontology.

From the Great Exhibition to Sydenham Hill

The story begins at the Great Exhibition of 1851, when more than six million people visited the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. After the fair the gigantic glass structure was dismantled and rebuilt on Sydenham Hill in 1852, where it became a sprawling cultural complex presenting art, industry and the natural world. At Prince Albert’s suggestion, one of its attractions would be a prehistoric landscape — islands populated by full‑scale statues of ancient animals.

Joseph Paxton designed the landscaped setting and Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins was commissioned to produce the sculptures. Hawkins — an artist with a strong interest in natural history who had illustrated scientific works — worked closely with Richard Owen, the paleontologist who had named Dinosauria. Early 19th‑century discoveries by William Buckland and by Gideon and Mary Ann Mantell (who found Hylaeosaurus and Iguanodon) provided the fossil basis for the project.

Reconstruction, Rivalry and Two Iguanodons

Hawkins and Owen pioneered life‑size three‑dimensional reconstructions of extinct animals, drawing on fossils and analogies with living species to fill in unknowns. The most controversial subject was the posture of Iguanodon. Gideon Mantell favored a lizardlike form with long hind limbs; later work confirmed the powerful hind legs but revised other details. Owen preferred a more heavy, mammal‑like stance and even gave his model a horn‑like structure.

The rivalry between Owen and Mantell grew bitter. Owen publicly disparaged Mantell’s scientific standing; Mantell, weakened by chronic pain and opiate treatment after a carriage accident, died in 1852 from an overdose. Owen later acquired Mantell’s spinal specimen for the Hunterian Museum. Hawkins, attempting compromise, built two versions of the Iguanodon — one more reptilian, the other bulkier — but it was Owen’s mammal‑like figure that hosted the famous dinner.

The New Year’s Eve Dinner

Hawkins invited zoologists, geologists, anatomists, patrons and the press to dine “in the Iguanodon” as a demonstration of the models’ scientific credibility. Twenty‑one guests accepted. The hollowed sculpture was staged with banners honoring deceased naturalists and Richard Owen presided at the head table. He delivered the principal address and toasted Gideon Mantell as the discoverer of the Iguanodon — a gesture that readers then and now interpret variously as reconciliation or triumph.

Chorus from a song written for the evening:
"The jolly old beast / Is not deceased / There’s life in him again! / ROAR!"

Menu cards survive: the eight‑course meal included mock turtle soup, turbot à l’hollandaise, pigeon pie and salmi de perdrix, followed by jellies, Bavarian cream, Charlotte Russe and nougat à la Chantilly. Wines included sherry, Madeira, port, Moselle and claret. The dinner began at 4 p.m.; the guests socialized long into the night.

Public Reaction and Cultural Impact

The event received broad press coverage. Punch lampooned the idea with comic asides; the Illustrated London News published lengthy illustrated accounts. For many readers the dinner and the accompanying articles provided a first introduction to dinosaurs and the emerging science of paleontology. When Hawkins’s full‑size sculptures opened to the public, huge crowds visited Crystal Palace Park and purchased miniature reproductions — the images of prehistoric life quickly spread into popular culture and later literature by Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle and others.

Legacy and Conservation

Although the Crystal Palace itself burned in 1936, the landscaped park survives and still contains roughly thirty of Hawkins’s original sculptures. Weathering and vandalism took their toll, and by the early 21st century some figures were badly eroded or missing. A dedicated charity, Friends Of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, successfully campaigned for restoration funding; during multi‑year conservation work sculptures were repaired, repainted and, where necessary, reconstructed. Historic England completed detailed digital scans of the statues in 2023 to preserve their forms for future study.

Modern paleontology has shown that many details of the Victorian models — especially Owen’s Iguanodon — were inaccurate. Yet the Crystal Palace reconstructions remain important cultural artifacts: striking examples of how Victorian science, art and spectacle brought prehistoric life into the public imagination.