An expedition to London and Salute.
The weekend of 25th and 26th April 2015, the Antediluvian miniatures team launched an expedition to London to participate go to the War gaming show ‘Salute’. We took this rare opportunity to do some sight seeing and visit some of the places that have inspired the range of miniatures currently under development. Firstly there was the obligatory visit to the Natural History Museum, the dinosaur room was packed full of enthusiastic families, while some of the displays are a little out of date in terms of more recent understanding of dinosaurs, it is clear that the appeal of these fossilised bones endures through the generations. It was good to get to see the iconic Diplodocus which graces the entrance hall of the museum, as he or she will soon be replaced by another exhibit. We also enjoyed seeing some models of the Crystal Palace Megalosaur which ours is inspired by.
The show on Saturday was in the massive ExCel building. Stuart at Studio Miniatures was kindly displaying our Megalosaurus and Iguanodon sculpted by Andrew May, alongside the master casts of our new ‘Adventurers’ sculpted by Matthew Bickley, as well as his own popular ranges and the Claymore Castings ( another of our projects) . We collected the Adventurers at the show and they are now on their way to be put into production moulds, we hope to have these available for sale by early June. This was also the first opportunity for people to buy the Iguanodon, which is now available on our Shop page. We had a great time at the show catching up with friends old and new, looking at all the weird and wonderful exhibits and enthusing about lost world adventures.
The day after the show we didn’t quite feel up to the London Marathon which was on, so we went south to crystal palace park instead where the sculptures by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins are still exhibited. These have been the inspiration for our first dinosaurs in the range, and it was wonderful to get to see them in person.
Megalosaurus
So who is this scaly brute called megalosaurus? In 1676, the end of a hip bone was discovered in a quarry in Oxfordshire, it was originally thought to belong to a Roman war elephant or even a giant. Later named “Scrotum Humanum” after it’s distinctive appearance, this hip bone may have belonged to this creature. Further discoveries were made in the late 1700s including part of a jawbone.
Megalosaurus was possibly the first dinosaur to be scientifically named and described, and can also lay claim to be one of the first few fossils to inspire palaeontologist Richard Owen to coin the term “Dinosauria” in the 1820s. Based on these fragmentary remains, the Victorians erroneously reconstructed the beast as a giant lizard like quadruped.
In the 1850s reconstructions of several extinct animals were unveiled as an attraction at Crystal Palace Park in London, amongst which were the worlds first dinosaur sculptures including megalosaurus and iguanodon, sometimes known as the “Dinosaur Court”. The originals were created by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, who’s sculptures Andrew May has based our models upon.
Our models are available to buy here.
Antediluvian Miniatures 