| Niolamia Temporal range:
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| Skull and mandible | |
Scientific classification 
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| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Clade: | Pantestudines |
| Clade: | Testudinata |
| Family: | †Meiolaniidae |
| Genus: | †Niolamia Ameghino, 1899 |
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| Synonyms | |
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Niolamia is an extinct genus of South American meiolaniid turtle with a long and complex history. Like its relatives, Niolamia was a robust and heavily armored terrestrial turtle with large, horn like scales covering its head and a tail encased by rings of bone. This heavily armored build may have served the animal during intraspecific combat during courtship, though such encounters likely did not involve the horns and frill, which are thought to serve more of a display function. Scans of the skull reveal that Niolamia likely had a great sense of smell but only low frequency hearing, indicating that these animals communicated more through chemical signals and smells than through sound.
Niolamia is one of only two named meiolaniid turtles from South America, the other being Gaffneylania. Given that this family is primarily distributed throughout the Neogene and Quaternary of Australasia, this makes Niolamia an important piece in the evolutionary history and origin of this turtle family.
Remains attributed to Niolamia were seemingly first uncovered by Santiago Roth in 1889, with a well preserved skull found only shortly afterwards. The name Niolamia was however not coined by Roth or any of his contacts, but by Florentino Ameghino who briefly wrote about what was said to be another skull discovered by his brother. While Ameghino's name was retained for the animal, later publications were entirely based on Roth's material, as Ameghino neither diagnosed nor figured his fossil. The fact that Ameghino's material was never recovered after his initial communication has led some researchers to believe that the two specimens are one and the same.