Eonatator

Extinct genus of lizards
Automatic Taxobox
| image = UPI R 163 (Wiman, 1920). png
| image upright = 1.2
| image caption = Holotype of E. sternbergii (UPI R 163)efn|Note that parts of the skull and tail's neural spines, among others, were restored with plaster to provide an erroneous Clidastes like appearance. | type species = Clidastes sternbergii
| type species authority = (Wiman 1920)
| subdivision ranks = Species
| subdivision =
Eonatator coellensis small|Páramo 2013 from the Kristianstad Basin of southern Sweden (late early Campanian), and the unit Nivel de Lutitas y Arenas (Campanian) of the Olini Group in La Mesa, Colombia. A second species, E. coellensis, was named for the town of Coello in the Department of Tolima in Colombia, near of which it was discovered.

Eonatator was a small mosasaur, with the type specimen of Eonatator sternbergii, UPI R 163, measuring approximately long. Bardet et al. (2005, p. 465 Although some agreed with this generic attribution, other paleontologists suggested that while H. sternbergii did not belong to Clidastes, its designation under Halisaurus is questionable; Lingham Soliar (1996) referred H. sternbergii to C. sternbergii again, but this has found no acceptance in other researchers. but this has found no acceptance in other researchers who used the genus name Eonatator instead. The analysis excluded the dubious Halisaurus onchognathus and the genus Pluridens. In their 2023 description of the new Halisaurus species, H. hebae, Shaker et al. performed a phylogenetic analyses of members of the Halisaurinae. They suggested that Phosphorosaurus ponpetelegans and Eonatator coellensis were more closely related to the genus Halisaurus than the type species of their respective genera. They tentatively assigned both of these species to Halisaurus. The results of their analyses are displayed in the cladogram below: