Nigersaurus was named after the West African country exactly where its fossils are already uncovered: The Republic of Niger. Back when this animal roamed, forests and braided rivers protected the landscape. (Nigersaurus would've needed to Be careful for Sarcosuchus, a huge relative of modern crocodiles.)
While it experienced large nostrils and a fleshy snout, Sereno and colleagues located that Nigersaurus had an underdeveloped olfactory location of its Mind and thus did not have a sophisticated perception of smell. Its Mind-to-human body-mass ratio was average for your reptile, and smaller sized than All those of ornithischians and non-coelurosaurian theropods. The cerebrum comprised about 30% with the Mind volume, as in a number of other dinosaurs.[three] The American palaeoartist Mark Hallett and paleontologist Mathew J.
There were plenty of mild, aerated bones — typically connected to theropods, like Tyrannosaurus rex, as well as birds that progressed from them — Hence the scientists assumed which was what they have been coping with.
Nigersaurus is a vital discovery for paleontologists since it helps you to get rid of mild about the evolution and diversity of sauropods in the course of the mid-Cretaceous period of time.
We have been closing in on that objective rapidly since we arrived upon a skeleton a couple of days later on! This skeleton is lying on its side with the tail curved upward. The curve in the spine actions about 15 toes.
It lived in the course of a time when the location was lined in forests and braided rivers, and would've had to watch out what dinosaur has 500 teeth for your existence of Sarcosuchus, a giant relative of contemporary crocodiles.
Following the iguanodontian Lurdusaurus, Nigersaurus was quite possibly the most several megaherbivore. Other herbivores from the very same development incorporate Ouranosaurus, Elrhazosaurus, and an unnamed titanosaur. Collectively, these compose among the handful of associations of megaherbivores with a equilibrium of sauropods and large ornithopods.
The most distinctive attributes of Nigersaurus was its rows of tiny, peg-like teeth, which had been arranged in a straight line alongside the front of its jaws. These teeth had been continually replaced through the entire dinosaur’s lifestyle, allowing for it to feed frequently on rough vegetation.
A 2009 study via the British palaeontologist Mike P. Taylor and colleagues agreed that Nigersaurus was capable to feed Along with the downturned head and neck posture proposed with the 2007 research, but contested this was the habitual posture on the animal. The research noted which the "neutral" head and neck posture of contemporary animals will not essentially correspond for their habitual head posture.
Among the many myriad of dinosaurs that when roamed our World, the Nigersaurus stands out, not for its dimension or ferocity, but for its impressive dental structure.
The name "Nigersaurus" has begun controversy and discussion while in the scientific Group and beyond on account of its probable for misinterpretation and unintended connotations.
It experienced a brief neck for just a sauropod, with thirteen cervical vertebrae. Nearly all rebbachisaurids experienced rather quick necks and also a size of 10 m (33 ft) or a lot less. The only member on the relatives that reached the scale of larger sized sauropods was
Fossils of this dinosaur were very first explained in 1976, but it was only named Nigersaurus taqueti in 1999, soon after additional plus more complete remains were being located and described. The genus identify means "Niger reptile", and the precise title honours the palaeontologist Philippe Taquet, who discovered the first continues to be.
The authors thus cautioned against utilizing semicircular canals as proxy to infer the precise orientation of skulls. They located that food plan correlated strongly with semicircular canal orientation, although not with head posture, although head posture and semicircular canal orientation ended up strongly correlated with phylogeny.[25]