Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins was born in London on 8 February 1807. He studied at St Aloysius College in London and learned sculpture from William Behnes, but after 1827, devoted himself primarily to the study of natural history. During the 1840s, he produced studies of living animals in Knowsley Park, near Liverpool for Edward Stanley, 13th Earl of Derby. His knowledge of comparative anatomy and versatility at painting enabled him to create beautiful and scientifically accurate illustrations of fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, mammals, insects, and the fossils of long-extinct creatures for such important figures as the palaeontologist Richard Owen, the naturalist Charles Darwin and the biologist Thomas Henry Huxley early in his career. He exhibited four sculptures at the Royal Academy between 1847 and 1849, was elected a member of the Society of Arts in 1846 and a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1847. Fellowship of the Geological Society of London followed in 1854. As one of the most versatile and prolific natural history artists of the Victorian age, Hawkins played a central role in the popularisation of 19th century science. His studies in bronze were presented as gifts from the society to Queen Victoria and to the Czar of Russia. Possibly due to Lord Derby’s influence, Hawkins was appointed Assistant Superintendent of the Great Exhibition of 1851. He constructed 33 life-sized Iguanodons, Megalosaurs, Ichtyosaurs, Megatheres and other exotica, which were installed in the grounds of Sydenham Park in 1854. Owen used the known parts of dinosaur skeletons to estimate the size and overall shape and Hawkins sculpted the life-size models following his instructions. To celebrate that achievement, Hawkins held a dinner on 31 December 1853 in the interior of his model ‘Iguanodon’ for leading scientists of the day, including Owen and Professor Edward Forbes. Newspapers praised the frightening realism of the sculptures and thousands flocked to see the models, which cost more than £14,000 to create. An enthusiastic educator, Hawkins published Popular Comparative Anatomy (London, 1840); Elements of Form (1842); Comparative View of the Human and Animal Frame (1860); Atlas of Elementary Anatomy (in collaboration with Professor Thomas Huxley, 1865); Artistic Anatomy of Cattle and Sheep (1873) and Artistic Anatomy of the Horse (1874). In 1868 Hawkins travelled to America to deliver a series of lectures. He also helped cast an almost complete Hadrosaurus skeleton, which was then displayed at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. Supported on an iron framework in a life-like pose, this was the world’s first mounted dinosaur skeleton. Hawkins was later commissioned to produce models for New York City’s Central Park similar to these he had created at Sydenham. The plan was to set them up in a ‘Paleozoic Museum’ in Central Park, which was then being landscaped under the direction of Frederick Law Olmstead, an ex-engineer officer in the Union Army. He established a studio on the modern site of the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. However, with a change of regime at City Hall in 1871, the project fell foul of the city’s notoriously corrupt political elite, led by William Magear ‘Boss’ Tweed, who shelved the idea and pocketed the money. Hawkins publicly criticised Tweed and his cronies, and shortly afterwards, thugs broke into his workshop and destroyed the sculptures. The models that Hawkins had created are believed to have been buried under Central Park. (Tweed was later convicted of embezzling millions of dollars from New York City funds and ended his political career in the slammer on Ludlow Street in Manhattan). Hawkins left New York a greatly embittered man. He then turned his attentions to dinosaur skeleton reconstruction work at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, at Princeton University (then the College of New Jersey) in Princeton, New Jersey (where he also created paintings of dinosaurs), and for the Centennial Exhibition of 1876 in Philadelphia before returning to Britain in 1878. He suffered a stroke in 1889, leading to erroneous reports of his death and he finally passed away on 27 January 1894. A plaque to his memory was placed on his old home ‘Fossil Villa’, at 22 Belvedere Road, Anerley by the London Borough of Bromley. In 2008 the book All in the Bones: A Biography of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins by Valerie Bramwell and Robert M Peck was published.