Hierosaurus

Hierosaurus (meaning "sacred lizard") is an extinct genus of nodosaurid ankylosaur which lived during the Late Cretaceous 87 to 82 million years ago. Its fossils were found in the Smoky Hill Chalk Member of the Niobrara Formation, in western Kansas, which would have been near the middle of the Western Interior Sea during the Late Cretaceous. It was a nodosaurid, an ankylosaur without a clubbed tail.

Spine

Hierosaurus Temporal range: Late Cretaceous, 87–82 Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N ↓
Holotype
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Reptilia
Clade:	Dinosauria
Clade:	†Ornithischia
Clade:	†Thyreophora
Clade:	†Ankylosauria
Clade:	†Euankylosauria
Family:	†Nodosauridae
Genus:	†Hierosaurus Wieland, 1909
Species:	†H. sternbergii
Binomial name
†Hierosaurus sternbergii Wieland, 1909

The only species of this genus, Hierosaurus sternbergii, was described by George Wieland on the basis of cranial and postcranial osteoderms collected by Charles Hazelius Sternberg in the Niobrara Formation of western Kansas.^[1] Nowadays, Hierosaurus is considered a nomen dubium, and a second species, H. coleii, was reassigned to the new genus Niobrarasaurus in 1995.^[2][3]

See also

• Dinosaurs portal

• Timeline of ankylosaur research