28 May 2025 The Future is the Product of the Past

New suspect in greatest act of vandalism in the history of dinosaur study

Researchers from the University of Bristol are rewriting the history of paleontology’s darkest and most bizarre event.

Vandals with sledgehammers destroyed skeletons and models intended for display in New York’s first dinosaur museum before it was even finished in 1871.

For more than a century, historians believed William “Boss” Tweed, New York’s most powerful political figure at the time, was to blame. But now researchers have revisited the crime — and point to a new suspect in what they call the “greatest act of vandalism in the history of dinosaur study.”

However, a recent paper by Victoria Coules of Bristol’s Department of History of Art and Professor Michael Benton of Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences sheds new light on the incident and, in contrast to earlier accounts, identifies who was actually behind the order and what drove them to such wanton destruction—an odd man by the name of Henry Hilton, the Treasurer and VP of Central Park.

Paleontology was still in its infancy in 1871, and new discoveries made all over the world stoked curiosity about the enormous extinct animals. The Paleozoic Museum was to feature the work of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, an English natural history artist who galvanized interest in dinosaurs in the United States with the display of the world’s first mounted dinosaur skeleton in Philadelphia in 1868.

Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkin's conceptual drawing of the Paleozoic Museum. Photo: Annual report of the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park (1858)
Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkin’s conceptual drawing of the Paleozoic Museum. Photo: Annual report of the Board of Commissioners of Central Park (1858)

Hawkins used fossil evidence to create full-sized models for elaborate dioramas in preparation for the New York Museum. However, the museum was canceled in 1870 by the Tweed-controlled Central Park board. Vandals destroyed all of Hawkins’ models, casts, and studio a few months later.

“It’s all to do with the struggle for control of New York City in the years following the American Civil War (1861-1865),” said Victoria Coules. “The city was at the center of a power struggle—a battle for control of the city’s finances and lucrative building and development contracts.”

As the city grew, the iconic Central Park was taking shape. More than just a green space, it was to have other attractions, including the Paleozoic Museum.

Professor Benton explains, “Previous accounts of the incident had always reported that this was done under the personal instruction of ‘Boss’ Tweed himself, for various motives from raging that the display would be blasphemous, to vengeance for a perceived criticism of him in a New York Times report of the project’s cancelation.”

 A, William “Boss” Tweed (1823–1878)
A, William “Boss” Tweed (1823–1878). Photo: Wikipedia

“Reading these reports, something didn’t look right,” Coules said. “At the time Tweed was fighting for his political life, already accused of corruption and financial wrong-doings, so why was he so involved in a museum project?” She added, “So we went back to the original sources and found that it wasn’t Tweed—and the motive was not blasphemy or hurt vanity.”

The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) and the Central Park Zoo were two additional projects in Central Park that were simultaneously under construction, which complicated the situation. But, as Professor Benton explained, “drawing on the detailed annual reports and minutes of Central Park, along with reports in the New York Times, we can show that the real villain was one strange character by the name of Henry Hilton.”

Coules adds, “Because all the primary sources are now available online, we could study them in detail—and we could show that the destruction was ordered in a meeting by the real culprit, Henry Hilton, the Treasurer and VP of Central Park—and it was carried out the day after this meeting.”

C, Henry Hilton (1824–1899)
C, Henry Hilton (1824–1899). Photo: Wikipedia

Professor Benton concluded, “This might seem like a local act of thuggery but correcting the record is hugely important in our understanding of the history of paleontology. We show it wasn’t blasphemy, or an act of petty vengeance by William Tweed, but the act of a very strange individual who made equally bizarre decisions about how artifacts should be treated—painting statues or whale skeletons white and destroying the museum models. He can be seen as the villain of the piece but as character, Hilton remains an enigmatic mystery.”

Hilton was already notorious for other eccentric decisions. When he noticed a bronze statue in the Park, he ordered it painted white, and when a whale skeleton was donated to the American Museum of Natural History, he had that painted white as well. Later in life, other ill-judged decisions included cheating a widow out of her inheritance, squandering a huge fortune, and trashing businesses and livelihoods along the way.

Cover Photo: Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins’s workshop with his mounted skeletons and life-size restorations of dinosaurs and other animals. (Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins Album/Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia)

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pgeola.2023.04.004

Related Articles

Researchers reveal the 4,500-year-old network of funerary avenues in Arabian Peninsula

15 January 2022

15 January 2022

Archaeologists from the University of Western Australia (UWA) have determined that people living in ancient northwest Arabia built long-distance “funerary...

New Study shows Early Native Americans in Alaska were freshwater fishermen 13,000 years ago

15 June 2023

15 June 2023

A team led by the University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers has discovered the earliest known evidence that Native Americans living...

Researchers sequenced the DNA 1,600-year-old sheep mummy from an ancient Iranian salt mine, Chehrabad

16 July 2021

16 July 2021

A multinational team of geneticists and archaeologists sequenced the DNA from a 1,600-year-old sheep mummy discovered from Chehrabad, a salt...

Ancient Mesopotamians bred horse-like hybrids

17 January 2022

17 January 2022

New research finds that Mesopotamians were utilizing hybrids of domesticated donkeys and wild asses to drive their war wagons 4,300...

A Glorious Temple, inside which Sacrifices Were Performed, was Found in the Sanctuary of Artemis Amarysia on Greek Island of Euboea

13 January 2024

13 January 2024

Archaeologists excavating at the Artemis Amarysia sanctuary in Amarynthos on the Greek island of Euboea have revealed new insight into...

1900-year-old Child’s Nightgown with intriguing knots found in the Cave of Letters in the Judean Desert

5 October 2023

5 October 2023

The Cave of Letters in Israel is one such site that has yielded a large number of papyrus letters and...

2,000-year-old bamboo slips discovered in Yunnan

31 March 2023

31 March 2023

Thousands of bamboo slips (rectangles tied together to form books) have been discovered at the Hebosuo archaeological site in southwestern...

Ancient Babylon Excavation Uncovers 478 Artifacts Including Cuneiform Tablets, and Cylindrical Seals

16 October 2024

16 October 2024

The Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH) announced that 478 artifacts were uncovered during an excavation expedition in...

Archaeologists Discover Assyrian-Style Leather Armor 2,700 Years Old in China

11 December 2021

11 December 2021

The new research shows that the unique leather armor found in a horse rider’s tomb in Northwest China was made...

The World’s Largest Pyramid Is Hidden Within a Hill in Mexico

8 October 2022

8 October 2022

The largest and tallest pyramids in the world are incredible feats of design, engineering, and construction. The Great Pyramid of...

Silk Road archaeological discoveries draw attention despite the pandemic

20 June 2021

20 June 2021

A report prepared by more than 30 global experts believes that despite the COVID-19 pandemic, archaeological discoveries related to the...

Viking Ship Burials Shrouded in Mystery on Danish Island

25 May 2021

25 May 2021

Archaeologists studying the origins and makeup of the Kalvestene burial field, a famed place in Scandinavian legend, have undertaken new...

Ming-era two shipwrecks found in South China Sea

23 May 2023

23 May 2023

In the South China Sea, two ancient shipwrecks that date back to the middle of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) were...

An amateur archeologist has discovered a Roman war site

1 November 2021

1 November 2021

Thanks to the insistence of an amateur archaeologist, a Roman battlefield in Switzerland has been identified. Shortly before the birth...

A painted Wooden Saddle Discovered in an Ancient Tomb in Mongolia Represents Earliest Evidence of Modern Horse Riding

13 December 2023

13 December 2023

Researchers unearthed a wooden saddle framed with iron stirrups in a tomb in Urd Ulaan Uneet, popularly known as the...