Nigersaurus was named following the West African place exactly where its fossils are actually found: The Republic of Niger. Back when this animal roamed, forests and braided rivers covered the landscape. (Nigersaurus would've had to watch out for Sarcosuchus, a massive relative of contemporary crocodiles.)
Nigersaurus didn't exhibit the same modifications witnessed inside the jaws of other dinosaurs with dental batteries, or mammals with elaborate chewing functions. The lessen jaw was L-formed and divided into the subcylindrical transverse ramus, which contained the teeth, as well as back again ramus, which was much more light-weight and was the location for most of the muscle mass attachments. It had been distinct in the tooth row expanded to the sides within the aircraft of the primary ramus with the reduced jaw.
Nigersaurus is assumed to get lived in significant herds and may have migrated around very long distances looking for meals.
The authors consequently cautioned against applying semicircular canals as proxy to infer the specific orientation of skulls. They uncovered that eating plan correlated strongly with semicircular canal orientation, but not with head posture, whilst head posture and semicircular canal orientation had been strongly correlated with phylogeny.[25]
What dinosaur has 500 teeth? An unorthodox herbivore, this reptile grazed in what's now the Sahara Desert a hundred and ten million decades back. These sauropod dinosaurs collected food stuff with a large, broad mouth; the snout was wider as opposed to again of your creature's head on the first fossil cranium.
This sauropod (long-necked dinosaur) has an unusual cranium that contains as a lot of as 500 slender teeth. A significant objective of this expedition is to discover the remainder of this abnormal dinosaur so we can explain it and reconstruct it for everybody to see.
in 1999, immediately after further more and much more comprehensive continues to be were being observed and explained. The genus identify signifies "Niger reptile", and the precise name honours the French palaeontologist Philippe Taquet, who identified the 1st continues to be.
This swift tooth substitution, with new teeth rising every 14 times, ensured it managed sharp edges for grazing on smooth vegetation. The exceptional dental arrangement manufactured it highly successful at processing very low-lying crops, contributing to its name for a specialised herbivore.
Paleontologist Paul Sereno described Nigersaurus as “the weirdest dinosaur I’ve ever noticed” if the dinosaur’s uncommon Nigersaurus features were very first found in 2007. The teeth were being particularly noteworthy as they have been arranged in dental batteries, which are usually found in beaked herbivores like Triceratops and Edmontosaurus, but are exceptional amongst sauropods.
And what a skeleton it absolutely was! The newfound fossils gave us our to start with think about the dino's challenging dental batteries and vacuum cleaner mouth. Sereno named the species Nigersaurus taqueti — being an homage to French paleontologist Philippe Taquet — in 1999.
A 2023 research through the French palaeontologist Rémi Lefebvre and colleagues examined the microanatomical framework of the limb bones of Nigersaurus via CT-scans, the very first these kinds of research of a sauropod. Virtual sections on the limb bones sampled from people today of different dimensions were being explored to determine the variety of variation. Weighty-pounds bearing animals frequently have functions associated with this situation, impacting the internal composition from the limb bones, nevertheless the variation involving these types of bones is inadequately recognised.
Ingesting like which can be rough on the dental wellbeing Unless of course you have a syteady offer of substitute teeth. Nigersaurus must have worn out its tooth crowns in a swift-hearth pace.
Dental batteries are a novel adaptation present in some plant-having dinosaurs that permitted them to effectively system challenging vegetation. These batteries consist of vertically stacked columns of teeth, While using the prime tooth in Every column remaining changed as it wears out.
The sauropod dinosaur Nigersaurus probable advanced its unusually-formed head to better mow prehistoric lawns.