I'm in Crystal Palace Park, in south London, and there are dinosaurs.
Models of dinosaurs, anyway. And inaccurate models at that:
but that's because they're more than 150 years old.
These were the first ever lifesize models of extinct creatures,
built for the gardens of the enormous Crystal Palace
that used to stand on top of that hill over there.
They were made by the wonderfully-named Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins,
we now know that they are utterly wrong in many significant ways,
but at the time they were a marvel:
look at what once walked the earth!
Now, in England, there's a list of buildings that have special protection under the law.
Buildings on that list are called... Listed Buildings.
Because they're on the list.
Of buildings.
And this country's full of them: Historic England,
the not-quite-government organisation that manages the list,
says there's about half a million buildings on it.
Most of those are only Grade 2 listed,
which means they've got to be kept mostly intact,
and any changes need a really good reason behind them,
but more than 10,000 places are Grade 1 listed,
which means they must be preserved.
Pretty much anything that was built more than 200 years ago and is still standing is on the list,
but there are some more modern things too... including these dinosaurs.
Yep. Grade 1 listed dinosaurs. Can't be changed, moved, or demolished,
have to kept in good condition.
And they can't be updated to reflect what modern palaeontologists know,
because that would involve changing them,
and destroying not a dinosaur display --
but a display about what we once thought dinosaurs looked like,
something that's notable not because of what it represents in itself,
but because of the history in the sculptures.
These dinosaurs must, by law, remain inaccurate,
because the story they tell isn't about prehistoric times...
it's about science, just 150 years ago.
I've done a video with Minute Earth about Null Island,
the busiest place that doesn't exist.
You can check go it out on their channel.
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