A 2009 examine with the British palaeontologist Mike P. Taylor and colleagues agreed that Nigersaurus was in a position to feed While using the downturned head and neck posture proposed by the 2007 research, but contested this was the habitual posture from the animal. The examine observed that the "neutral" head and neck posture of modern animals won't always correspond to their habitual head posture.
Hans is dealing with a crew of Allison and Dave to excavate a different web page. As we dug across the cranium, we uncovered A further juvenile skull of the same species lying right next to the big 1.
Nigersaurus was named and explained in more element by Sereno and colleagues only in 1999, depending on remains of freshly observed men and women. Exactly the same article also named Jobaria, A different sauropod from Niger. The genus title Nigersaurus ("Niger reptile") is actually a reference to the place in which it was found out, and the precise name taqueti honours Taquet, who was the 1st to organise massive-scale palaeontological expeditions to Niger.
Nigersaurus lived a hundred and ten million several years ago in what has become Niger, West Africa. Even though the fossils had been located in the Sahara Desert, when Nigersaurus lived the area was a floodplain with large rivers, conifer forests and lush vegetation.
The Nigersaurus is a captivating and distinctive dinosaur which includes captured common focus, partly due to its unconventional functions and intriguing nickname because the "dinosaur with 500 teeth."
After conducting a biomechanical Investigation, a person crew of scientists concluded that The pinnacle and muzzle were habitually oriented sixty seven° downwards and close to the bottom due to adaptation for floor-level browsing.
The fast substitute of its teeth, each and every 14 days, indicates that the Nigersaurus faced important evolutionary pressures to keep up a continuing supply of functional teeth to cope with abrasive plant substance. This adaptation underlines the evolutionary very important to improve feeding efficiency in an setting where meals sources various and Levels of competition was intense.
Nigersaurus experienced a jaw structure unlike another dinosaur. Its broad, squared-off muzzle housed over 500 slender, pencil-like teeth. These teeth weren't evenly dispersed but had been organized in columns and rows, with as quite a few as nine substitution teeth guiding Every Energetic tooth.
Lifetime restoration Nigersaurus was distinctive in that its dorsal (back again) vertebrae had paired pneumatic spaces at The bottom from the neural spines (the spines that projected what dinosaur has 500 teeth upwards with the vertebrae). The presacral vertebrae (vertebrae in front of the sacrum) were being closely pneumatised to The purpose wherever the column consisted of the series of hollow "shells", Each and every divided by a thin septum in the center. It had very little to no cancellous bone, building the centra slender bone plates crammed with air Areas. The vertebral arches have been so greatly pierced by extensions from the external air sacs that in their aspect walls minimal remained but two mm (0.
One of the most distinct features of Nigersaurus was its mouth, which was Outfitted with many small, tightly packed teeth organized in rows. This authorized it to effectively crop and grind difficult plant matter, including ferns and horsetails.
The vast muzzle of Nigersaurus was most likely an adaptation to its small-lying herbivorous diet regime, letting it to simply scoop up and gather plant substance from the ground.
Like other sauropods, Nigersaurus experienced a lengthy neck and tail. Even so, its neck was rather limited compared to other associates of its team, aligning with its low-grazing Way of living. Its columnar legs supported its quadrupedal posture and helped bear its fat successfully.
Nigersaurus did not show the exact same modifications witnessed within the jaws of other dinosaurs with dental batteries, or mammals with elaborate chewing capabilities. The decreased jaw was L-shaped and divided in the subcylindrical transverse ramus, which contained the teeth, along with the back ramus, which was additional light-weight and was the location for most of the muscle mass attachments. It was distinctive in the tooth row expanded to the perimeters through the airplane of the leading ramus in the lower jaw.
The authors as a result cautioned in opposition to working with semicircular canals as proxy to infer the precise orientation of skulls. They located that diet program correlated strongly with semicircular canal orientation, although not with head posture, while head posture and semicircular canal orientation have been strongly correlated with phylogeny.[25]