THE first reasonably complete dinosaur skeleton found in the world was discovered in New Jersey. Hadrosaurus foulkii was dug up in Haddonfield in 1858. Ten years later it became the first fully articulated dinosaur skeleton to ever be displayed.

   The Hadrosaurus skeleton was realized by the 19th century British artist and naturalist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins. Though he is little remembered today, or even at the time of his death, Hawkins worked with the leading scientists of his day — Charles Darwin, Richard Owen, Thomas Henry Huxley — and was instrumental in expanding popular interest in prehistoric life.

   In 1875, distinguished Princeton University geology professor Arnold Guyot commissioned Hawkins to create a series of large oil paintings representing ancient life. The university, which awarded Hawkins an honorary doctor of science degree in June 1874, still owns the paintings (which are no longer on display), and agreed to lend them to Morven Museum and Garden in Princeton for Rocks & Dinos!, an exhibit on display through spring 2010.

   ”Although they are seldom seen today, they remain silent but powerful testaments to Hawkins’ vision of life and death in a changing world,” Valerie Bramwell and Robert M. Peck write in their 2008 biography of Hawkins, All in the Bones.

   The paintings each depict a geological period, creating a timeline of prehistoric life. Initially used mostly for education, they were hung around campus for approximately 130 years. Evolving scientific theories have debunked some of Hawkins’ portrayal of ancient life. In “Cretaceous Life of New Jersey,” for example, his depiction of dinosaurs fighting in the center of the painting is “anatomically impossible,” says Anne Gossen, Morven’s curator. “But it makes for a good picture.”

   Guyot also commissioned Hawkins to create a duplicate cast of the Hadrosaurus skeleton he created in 1868 for the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. The public response to the original was so strong the museum chose to charge an admission fee for the first time to stem the vast crowds. Nearly 100,000 people visited the museum in 1869, doubling the usual attendance.

   Life-size models of dinosaur skeletons are so common in natural-history museums today, it may be difficult to appreciate the effect they had on the popular imagination in the second half of the 19th century. The idea of prehistoric life challenged conceptions of the world’s natural order.

   Hawkins is best known for his sculptures of re-created ancient life displayed at the Crystal Palace in Sydenham, an exhibition ground in south London. His sculptures were the first life-size recreations of extinct animals. They attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors.

   Morven is displaying casts of Hawkins’ Crystal Palace fossil restorations, originally sold in a catalog by Henry Ward. These examples of a megalosaurus and iguanodon were the first dinosaur models available for purchase, according to Ms. Gossen.

   Hawkins began work on the sculptures in 1852, a pre-Darwinian time when people could not grasp the concept of extinction. The exhibit helped shape and shift perceptions of time and life, preparing people for what Darwin would tell five years later. For all his part in shaping the perception of evolution, Hawkins didn’t believe in the theory.

   Several of the paintings clash with the most up-to-date scientific understanding of the time. In “Jurassic Life of Europe,” Hawkins depicts an iguanodon as walking on four legs when scientists had concluded that the animal more likely walked on two. Perhaps, Ms. Gossen conjectures, the artist didn’t want to acknowledge that his life’s work was flawed. In these final 17 paintings before he retired, Hawkins appears to have selected which facts or theories to portray in light of his own vanity.

   Other paintings display a variety of awkward artistic qualities that, while creating a dramatic effect, betray a sense of naivete toward the subject. The dinosaurs emerging from the sea in “Triassic Life of Germany” each wear a goofy grin. “Tertiary Mammals of Europe” portrays a scenario of animal groups gathered after an extinction event. “I would be shocked if a scene like this ever happened in real life,” Ms. Gossen says.

   Hawkins’ science is more exact when he paints the ice ages. Knowing his work would come under the eye of Guyot, then a leading expert in glaciers, Ms. Gossen says, Hawkins paints as if “knowing a professor is going to test him.” The painter etches his initials into one of the painting’s rocks, as if it were graffiti.

   Hawkins appears to have been self-taught as a sculptor, illustrator and painter. Normally an illustrator would specialize in one animal, but Hawkins “did it all,” Ms. Gossen says. Here we see several of his hand colored lithographs that appeared in Illustrations of Indian Zoology, including the Bengal Vulture, the White Bended Eagle and the White Dotted Eagle.

   Through his early work with the Zoological Society of London, Hawkins began accumulating a knowledge of anatomy that would serve him throughout his career. He was so successful in depicting mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and fossils that he was asked to illustrate the last two parts of The Zoology of the Voyage of HMS Beagle, which was edited by Darwin.

   When he was first commissioned to work on dinosaurs, Hawkins “jumped ship from natural history right away,” Ms. Gossen says, adding that he believed the dinosaur work could have a larger impact. “I think he loved the theatricality of it.”

   Indeed, Hawkins’ paintings weren’t as influential as his dinosaur work. As never before Hawkins developed an artistic interpretation of fossil evidence, combining that with engineering and construction skills to create life-sized creatures. Still, these final paintings allowed him the opportunity to present the vision of his life’s work.

   In Rocks and Dinos!, Hawkins’ paintings are paired with cases of fossils and books containing the kind of scientific information that was available to him. “We wanted to show what an immense amount of creativity it took to do what he did, to move from the fossils to the paintings,” Ms. Gossen says.

   The exhibit contains several interactive educational components for children, as well. For example, children are encouraged to touch several items such as dinosaur casts, the reproduced skull of a Smilodon, the mascot of Princeton University Geosciences, and a figure of Dracorex hogwartsia, a dinosaur discovered in 2007 and named after the Harry Potter books.

   Other fossils on display include a mastodon tooth and hipbone and an iguana skull, which Hawkins used to model his Hadrosaurus skull. No similar dinosaur skulls were available for comparison. “To this day no Hadrosaurus skull has been found,” Ms. Gossen says.