We had first tried to visit these sometime in the late 1990s, but found them off-limits because they were "awaiting restoration" -- i.e., had fallen into disrepair, but the money to conserve them and prevent further deterioration had not been forthcoming. It seemed that they were fated to moulder away entirely, but then the otherwise supine Bromley council -- the same Bromley council that had destroyed Ken Livingstone's cheap tube fares policy in the 1980s, and thus a favourite of Margaret Thatcher's -- woke up, realised what a tourist-attracting heritage item it had on its hands, and put together a funding bid. The dinosaurs were duly restored, re-opened to public access in 2003, and in 2007 were given Grade I listed status: the highest level of national listing.
As models of extinct creatures, they are in many respects very inaccurate -- the ichthyosaurus, for example, is depicted as able to come onto land to lay eggs, whereas it was wholly aquatic and gave birth to live young; the iguanadon and the megalosaur look more like dogs than lizards; the dicynodon has a shell like a turtle, whereas it is now thought to have looked more like a hippopotamus -- but they have been restored as they appeared to their Victorian builders not just because of their historical value but because of the insight they provide into the history of palaeontology itself: what the people of the time thought about the past, based on their understanding on the fossils then available.
Wikipedia's article on the Crystal Palace dinosaurs gives more information about them and their history, so I won't repeat that here. (Mind you, there doesn't seem to be much information about them anywhere else online.) In the meantime, here are some photographs, of -- in order -- the megalosaurus; a pair of iguanadons; two labyrinthodons (with people in the background for scale); the ichthyosaurus; and the megatherium. The tree the megatherium is hugging is original to the construction of the models; it is now dead, but because it continued growing after they were installed it eventually broke off the creature's left arm; if you examine the picture closely, you can see that the replacement arm is of a different colour.
(P.S. Nerdy travel note: we got to Crystal Palace by the recently re-opened and extended East London line -- so recently re-opened, in fact, that it's only just posted its first quarter's punctuality statistics. The line has also been rebranded, as part of the new London Overground network, grouping together a number of "orphan" routes which help fill the gaps between other services. We thoroughly approve.)
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