The world's first dinosaur and prehistoric animal park, containing 29 life-size statues in Crystal Palace Park in Bromley, Kent, has been fully restored 150 years after it was first built. The £4m project, with £3.3m granted from the Heritage Lottery Fund, involved work by palaeontologists, landscape architects and palaeobotanists; even the statues' original paintwork has been exposed and restored. 'Originally built in 1854, the dinosaur park caused controversy when it first opened', commented Professor Peter Doyle, the University of Greenwich palaeontologist acting as principal scientific advisor to the restoration project. 'It's important to remember that the park opened five years before the publication of Darwin's groundbreaking book, Origin of the Species, when the theory of evolution was not widely accepted.' The park is part of a Geological Time Trail, tracing Britain's geological history and will re-open in the summer of 2002.
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