A large sculpture depicting the dinosaur Hylaeosaurus armatus (meaning 'forest lizard'). It is a low-slung quadruped with a short neck, long tail and armoured back. A single row of prominent, large spikes adorns its back, decreasing in size to the tail. Smaller bony structures cover the top of the head, shoulders, back and hips. The Hylaeosaurus can only be seen from the back by public visitors, as access to the island is restricted. The head is a fibreglass replica; the original sits on the ground, on a hill overlooking the Lower Lake. The Crystal Palace lake statues collectively show several species of extinct mammals, amphibians, therapsids, marine reptiles, pterosaurs and dinosaurs. They represent the first attempt to accurately reconstruct the three dinosaur species known to the scientific world by the 1850s within their geological environment and the sculptures and associated geological strata form a unique display of the state of palaeological understanding in the 1850s, opened five years before the publication of Darwin's 'Origin of Species'.