Hierosaurus

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

Hierosaurus (meaning "sacred lizard") is an extinct genus of nodosaurid ankylosaur which lived during the 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 Western Interior Sea during the Late Cretaceous. It was a nodosaurid, an ankylosaur without a clubbed tail.

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. Nowadays, Hierosaurus is considered a nomen dubium, and a second species, H. coleii, was re-assigned to the new genus Niobrarasaurus in 1995.