Once the iguanodontian Lurdusaurus, Nigersaurus was the most a lot of megaherbivore. Other herbivores within the exact same formation include things like Ouranosaurus, Elrhazosaurus, and an unnamed titanosaur. Alongside one another, these compose among the handful of associations of megaherbivores using a harmony of sauropods and huge ornithopods.
Hans has actually been dealing with a crew of Allison and Dave to excavate a whole new web page. As we dug round the skull, we uncovered An additional juvenile skull of the identical species lying appropriate next to the big a single.
The stays of Nigersaurus ended up at first described by Taquet in 1976 as belonging to some dicraeosaurid, but in 1999 Sereno and colleagues reclassified it like a rebbachisaurid diplodocoid.[4] These scientists speculated that considering that small necks and tiny measurement was recognized amongst basal diplodocoids, it may well suggest these were being ancestral capabilities on the group.
Nigersaurus, a rebbachisaurid sauropod from the center Cretaceous time period, was uncovered within the Elrhaz Development in Niger. Its title, meaning “Niger’s lizard,” was offered pursuing the discovery of much more total continues to be in 1999, While its fossils ended up very first described in 1976.
Nigersaurus most well-liked to reside in places owning h2o Lakes or streams nearby; the world is also referred to as the riparian zone. Because of plentiful h2o, a riparian zone has a lot of small-lying vegetation. Riparian zones give Nigersaurus with many varieties of vegetation.
Fossil proof indicates it lived in what is now the Sahara Desert, feeding on ferns and other vegetation in its lush, riverine habitat.
Even so, this assert continues to be contested by other researchers who believe Nigersaurus that Nigersaurus was probably much more standard of other sauropods.
On The idea of microtomography scans of cranium things from the holotype specimen, Sereno and colleagues designed a "prototype" Nigersaurus cranium they could take a look at. Additionally they produced an endocast on the Mind and scanned the semicircular canals of its internal ear, which they uncovered to become oriented horizontally. In their 2007 review, they stated that the framework of the occiput in the back of the skull and cervical vertebrae would have constrained the upward and downward motion from the neck plus the rotation on the cranium.
Paleontologist Paul Sereno described Nigersaurus as “the weirdest dinosaur I’ve at any time witnessed” once the dinosaur’s unconventional functions were to start with uncovered in 2007. The teeth had been significantly noteworthy given that they had been arranged in dental batteries, which are typically located in beaked herbivores like Triceratops and Edmontosaurus, but are uncommon among the sauropods.
Given that quite a few rebbachisaurids inhabited latitudes that will have been tropical to subtropical in the Middle Cretaceous, this pneumaticity can have served the animals cope While using the pretty superior temperatures. As outlined by Ibiricu and colleagues, this adaptation could be a rationale why rebbachisaurids were being the one team of diplodocoids that survived to the Late Cretaceous.[21]
Superior however, All those tooth columns had been packed appropriate together with each other—like canned sardines. So a dinosaur armed with dental batteries could comfortably residence various hundred teeth (aged and new) inside its mouth.
In 2020, the French palaeontologist Julien Benoit and colleagues analyzed lateral semicircular canal correlation to head posture on fashionable mammals, and found that even though there was important correlation in between the reconstructed and real head postures, the airplane from the semicircular canal was not held horizontally from the resting pose as inferred.
Dinosaur-hunters are utilized to getting dental batteries in beaked herbivores much like the horned Triceratops and shovel-billed Edmontosaurus. Nonetheless they're scarce Amongst the sauropods.
What's far more, similar to grazing cows currently, these creatures were being ample for the duration of their heyday. Once the Original discovery, Sereno found A further Nigersaurus specimen throughout an expedition in 2000.