Who smashed dinosaur models in Central Park? A new suspect appears.

For more than a century, historians believed that William “Boss Tweed”, the most powerful political figure in New York at the time, was responsible. But now researchers have reconsidering The crime—and pointing to a new suspect in what they call “the greatest act of vandalism in the history of the study of dinosaurs.”

In 1871, paleontology was in its infancy, and interest in giant extinct creatures was fueled by new discoveries around the world. The Paleozoic Museum was to display the work of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, the English natural history artist who sparked interest in dinosaurs in the United States by displaying the world’s first dinosaur skeleton in Philadelphia in 1868.

In preparation for the New York Museum, Hawkins used the fossil evidence to create custom full-size models of the elaborate dioramas. But the Tweed-controlled Central Park Council abolished the museum in 1870. A few months later, all of Hawkins’ mannequins, staff, and studio were destroyed by vandals.

Previous histories have claimed that Tweed, who controlled the vastly democratic Tammany Hall machine, ordered the destruction for reasons ranging from religious objections to vendettas against Hawkins. But primary sources point to Henry Hilton, a powerful lawyer and state parks commissioner who personally ordered the models destroyed, the researchers write.

In a study published in the Proceedings of the Geologists Association, researchers found that Hilton was not only committed to a competing project, the American Museum of Natural History, but also “apparently had a strange connection to art, heritage, and artefacts.” [sic]. They uncovered other evidence of Hilton’s intervention, including ordering numerous historical and natural artifacts to be painted white and contesting the authority of museum officials.

Why bother reviving a forgotten piece of museum history?

“This may seem like a local act of bullying, but correcting the record is extremely important in our understanding of the history of paleontology. We have shown that it was not blasphemy, or an act of revenge by William Tweed,” says Michael Benton, professor in the University of Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences and one of the authors. The authors of the research paper, V New release.

The struggle for control of dinosaur archetypes unravels past debates about how dinosaurs appeared and how they actually lived, the researchers write — adding that a misrepresentation of the event in the history books deserves to be corrected.