That extensive muzzle with its Nigersaurus teeth was ideal for scooping up ferns, horsetails and other low-lying plants. And While using the bountiful teeth, the dinosaur would've had no trouble shearing through this vegetation.
Despite the memes, Nigersaurus remains a rare example of evolution and adaptation, deserving recognition for its distinctive features rather then Web controversy.
We are closing in on that intention rapidly for the reason that we arrived on a skeleton a few days afterwards! This skeleton is lying on its facet While using the tail curved upward. The curve in the backbone actions about 15 toes.
There has been discussion on no matter if its head was habitually held downwards, or horizontally like other sauropods. It lived within a riparian habitat, and its diet plan in all probability consisted of soppy plants, for instance ferns, horsetails, and angiosperms. It truly is Probably the most frequent fossil vertebrates discovered in the region, and shared its habitat with other dinosaurian megaherbivores, and also large theropods and crocodylomorphs.
Named following the region of Niger, in which its fossils had been first uncovered. The title was preferred to mirror its origins, nonetheless, the similarity in pronunciation to some racial slur has lifted issues about cultural sensitivity and suitable terminology.
Nigersaurus did not show a similar modifications noticed inside the jaws of other dinosaurs with dental batteries, or mammals with elaborate chewing capabilities. The reduce jaw was L-shaped and divided into your subcylindrical transverse ramus, which contained the teeth, and also the back again ramus, which was far more light-weight and was The situation for most of the muscle attachments. It was unique in which the tooth row expanded to the perimeters with the plane of the primary ramus in the decreased jaw.
Nigersaurus's feeding tactic was unlike many other dinosaurs. Its broad, flat jaw was tailored for grazing near the ground, earning it the nickname "Mesozoic Cow."
The snout was also proportionately shorter, and the tooth row was not at all prognathous, the snout idea not protruding relative to the rest with the tooth sequence.[1] Nigersaurus was distinctive in that its frontal bone (which shaped much of your cranium-roof) was elongate (Considerably narrower than lengthy), and had a marked cerebral fossa (a despair about the floor of this bone In the head).[4] The maxillary tooth row was in its entirety transversely rotated, its usual rear 90° everted in the direction of the front. This was matched by An analogous rotation on the dentary from the decreased jaw. This transverse orientation of your higher and decrease tooth rows was special into the dinosaur. Resulting from this configuration, no other tetrapod had all of its teeth Positioned as much into the front as Nigersaurus.[three][four]
The adductor muscle mass of your jaw seems to have attached for the quadrate in 500 teeth dinosaur place of the supratemporal fenestra. Each this and one other mastication muscles were probably weak, and Nigersaurus is believed to acquire had on the list of weakest bites of your sauropods.[3] On top of that, As outlined by Whitlock and colleagues in 2011, the compact, nearly parallel mother nature from the tooth scratches and pits (attributable to grit, which would not be acquired as frequently by higher-browsers) show that it ate fairly gentle, herbaceous crops which include small-escalating ferns.
Nigersaurus was named following the West African state exactly where its fossils were being learned: the Republic of Niger. Through this creature’s time, the landscape (now Component of the Sahara Desert) is believed to are protected with forests and braided rivers.
Following the iguanodontian Lurdusaurus, Nigersaurus was by far the most a lot of megaherbivore. Other herbivores from your identical development involve Ouranosaurus, Elrhazosaurus, and an unnamed titanosaur. Jointly, these compose one of many handful of associations of megaherbivores having a equilibrium of sauropods and enormous ornithopods.
There were plenty of mild, aerated bones — usually connected to theropods, like Tyrannosaurus rex, along with the birds that developed from them — And so the scientists assumed which was what they were managing.
In 1997, when paleontologist Paul Sereno initially began to unearth the stays of a dinosaur in Niger's Sahara Desert, he didn’t know what to Imagine. He was excavating bones within a dry location referred to as Gadoufaoua, which experienced a wealthy fossil mattress initial learned by French uranium miners.
Nigersaurus is believed to have lived in large herds and may have migrated above extensive distances in quest of foods.