The trick lies within the creature’s bones. Scientists may have found far more Nigersaurus fossils Should the animal experienced not experienced this sort of a fragile bone structure. Based on a examine by Sereno et al. 2007, this creature had an exceptionally lightweight cranium. Many of the bones in Nigersaurus
Nigersaurus (/niːˈʒɛərsɔːrəs, ˈnaɪdʒərsɔːrəs/) is often a genus of rebbachisaurid sauropod dinosaur that lived during the center Cretaceous interval, about a hundred and fifteen to a hundred and five million yrs in the past. It was identified from the Elrhaz Development in a place identified as Gadoufaoua, in Niger.
There were a great deal of light, aerated bones — normally affiliated with theropods, like Tyrannosaurus rex, as well as the birds that developed from them — so the researchers assumed that was what they ended up handling.
The authors consequently cautioned from employing semicircular canals as proxy to infer the precise orientation of skulls. They uncovered that eating plan correlated strongly with semicircular canal orientation, although not with head posture, whilst head posture and semicircular canal orientation had been strongly correlated with phylogeny.[25]
What dinosaur has five hundred teeth? An unorthodox herbivore, this reptile grazed in what's now the Sahara Desert one hundred ten million several years in the past. These sauropod dinosaurs collected food which has a significant, wide mouth; the snout was broader compared to the back again on the creature's head on the original fossil cranium.
It lived all through a time once the area was covered in forests and braided rivers, and might have needed to Be careful for your existence of Sarcosuchus, a giant relative of contemporary crocodiles.
Nigersaurus is considered to are actually a herbivore and can have fed on smooth crops using its prolonged neck and a little head.
Nigersaurus had a jaw construction unlike every other dinosaur. Its broad, squared-off muzzle housed around five hundred slender, pencil-like teeth. These teeth were not evenly distributed but were being arranged in columns and rows, with as numerous Nigersaurus as 9 substitute teeth behind Each individual Energetic tooth.
A 2015 cladistic study by Wilsona plus the French palaeontologist Ronan Allain identified Rebbachisaurus by itself to group Along with the nigersaurines, as well as the authors advised that Nigersaurinae was therefore a junior synonym of Rebbachisaurinae (considering that that title would have precedence).
Fossils of the dinosaur were being first described in 1976, but it absolutely was only named Nigersaurus taqueti in 1999, following additional and more complete stays have been discovered and described. The genus title implies "Niger reptile", and the precise identify honours the palaeontologist Philippe Taquet, who learned the 1st remains.
This bizarre, long-necked dinosaur is characterized by its unusually broad, straight-edged muzzle tipped with much more than five hundred replaceable teeth. The initial fossil cranium of Nigersaurus is among the initially dinosaur skulls to become digitally reconstructed from CT scans.
The dental structures of Nigersaurus also propose they ate delicate plants in large amounts to satisfy their nutritional specifications. They mainly ate angiosperms, horsetails, and ferns as food items. Numerous paleontologists also believe that their 500 carefully packed teeth arrangement also functioned just like a comb. This comb-like teeth arrangement may have also assisted them in filtering and ingesting aquatic crops.
Skeletal diagram demonstrating recognised things and size comparison Sereno and also the American palaeontologist Jeffrey A. Wilson presented the 1st comprehensive description in the cranium and feeding adaptations in 2005.[one] In 2007, a far more in-depth description on the skeleton was published by Sereno ad colleagues, based on a specimen identified ten several years before. The fossils, in addition to a reconstructed skeleton mount in addition to a plastic product of the head and neck, ended up subsequently introduced within the Countrywide Geographic Culture in Washington.
In 2017, the Argentinian palaeontologist Lucio M. Ibiricu and colleagues examined the postcranial skeletal pneumaticity inside the skeletons of rebbachisaurids, and recommended that it had been an adaptation for reducing the density on the skeleton, and that this might have lowered the muscle mass Power needed to go the body, as well as the heat generated in the procedure.