Final answer:
The first life-sized dinosaur sculptures were created by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins for the Crystal Palace exhibition in 1854.
Step-by-step explanation:
The first life-sized sculptures of dinosaurs were created by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins. He was commissioned to create these sculptures for the Crystal Palace exhibition of 1854 in London, providing the public with the first-ever attempt at full-scale reconstructions of extinct animals based on available fossil records. Although other notable figures like Charles Willson Peale and John James Audubon contributed significantly to the popularization and museum exhibition of natural history, it was Hawkins who took the step into paleontological modeling.