What in the World is that Giant Stucco Anteater Doing?

Perhaps there are some places that you have been to a few times, but—given some chance, serendipitous twist of happenstance—you are given the opportunity to see said location in an entirely new way. Now, place and revelatory circumstance will of course alter; Old Ken, for one, knows that he will never look at his flat in quite the same way after a session of projectile vomiting on the bedroom door a few weeks back. But, happily, the reconceptualization we have at hand here is nothing so nauseating; if anything, it might be considered sickeningly exciting. Well, maybe that is a bit of stretch.

Now, for some reason I did not share this with you, but, during my visit from a famous anthropologist about a month ago, we made a visit to Crystal Palace Park. A brief primer on Crystal Palace Park: apparently, the famous glass palace (of the eponymous, mid-nineteenth century exhibition) was moved to South London from Hyde Park in the later 1850s. Subsequently giving name to this area of Sydenham, the crystal palace was installed at the top of a hill and fitted out within a large and lovely park. Although the palace itself has long since burned, the famous anthopologist and Old Ken had a lovely afternoon of making rubbings of the hieroglyphs on the muscled skins of large, sculptural sphinxes which once marked the formal boundaries of the palace complex. Other delightful scenes Old Ken has observed on previous visits to the park include: a maze; a rusty, brutalist bandstand on which Bruce Springsteen (supposedly) performed; the Crystal Palace Anglers' Club fishing pond; a bouncy castle; and a go-cart track.



Well, friends Tim and Bev—currently residents of Crystal Palace, but who are departing for Nottingham all too soon—alerted yours truly to an amazing and previously unknown facet of the park design. Apparently, even prior to Darwin's 1859 Origin of Species, the progressively-minded designers of the exhibition had planned the uphill walk to the Palace as a kind of stroll through history. While the glass palace at the summit was to represent the culmination of human—or Man's, to use the terminology of the time—achievement, at the base of the hill were some historically novel and very curious inhabitants: dinosaurs. Consulting the BBC website, I see that one Richard Owen, the Victorian anatomist who devised the name "dinosaur," was also involved in concocting this amazing display. And again, despite Old Ken's affinity to Crystal Palace Park and abiding affection for dinosaurs, I had never known of—let alone seen—these curious beasts. Until now!



Given the substantial deterioration of the sphinxes mentioned above and other free-standing period scultpures in the park, I was shocked at the wonderful state of these dinosaurs. As it turns out, they have only recently been made accessible to the public after a substantial refurbishment. And what a sight they are!



I will not go through the catalogue of all we can see on display, but will instead allow you the flickering frisson as your eyes play across this exercise in haunting dinosaur realism.



Old Ken does wonder a bit about scale here, as we see something of a conversation piece between what would seem to be a leviathan of an icthyosaur and a very daintily proportioned plesiosaur. But who am I to quibble with the artistry?



Old Ken found the propect afforded by the extreme eastern edge of the Dinosaur Lake to be the most satisfying glimpse into our Jurassic past. In the foreground of the photograph above, it seems as though we have arrived just in time to catch the exchange of pleasantries between two massive turtle-toad beasts. As gentle plesiosaurs wriggle in the left middle distance, the majestic golden wings of a pair of adult pterodactyls can just be made out in near the center of the image, wings spread as they, no doubt, cry forth in their shrill, piercing call: AOUYYYGHTUOOOUGHAYOOO!



And even the ostensible ancestors of Twinkle-toes, the very frightening crocodile, are well represented, authentically situated in such a way was to demonstrate their interest in gardening and flower arrangement. As amazing as these dinosaurs are, though, is it justified to show a gigantic anteater having the sort of, em, relationship with a tree as suggested in the photo at the top?