Hierosaurus
Extinct genus of reptiles
Hierosaurus (meaning "sacred lizard") is an extinct genus of 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 likely a nodosaurid.
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. Hierosaurus is now considered a nomen dubium, and a second species, H. coleii, was reassigned to the new genus Niobrarasaurus in 1995.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Hierosaurus”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Hierosaurus.jpg by George Wieland, Public domain
- Hierosaurus spine.jpg by George Wieland, Public domain
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