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Dinosaur-hunters are used to discovering dental batteries in beaked herbivores such as the horned Triceratops and shovel-billed Edmontosaurus. However they're unusual Among the many sauropods.
Fossils of this dinosaur have been first described in 1976, but it absolutely was only named Nigersaurus taqueti in 1999, immediately after more plus more full remains were discovered and described. The genus name suggests "Niger reptile", and the specific title honours the palaeontologist Philippe Taquet, who discovered the primary remains.
A 2009 study by the British palaeontologist Mike P. Taylor and colleagues agreed that Nigersaurus was in a position to feed Along with the downturned head and neck posture proposed with the 2007 examine, but contested this was the habitual posture in the animal. The study mentioned that the "neutral" head and neck posture of recent animals won't always correspond for their habitual head posture.
If correct, it might starkly distinction with most sauropod reconstructions, exhibiting the animal holding its head horizontally.
Despite its more compact sizing, Nigersaurus is notable for its exceptional adaptations, particularly its specialised teeth and feeding mechanisms, which distinguish it in paleontological scientific tests.
Sauropod dinosaurs, like Nigersaurus, walked on four legs, using a lengthy “whiplash tail” and a lengthy neck. But in comparison with other sauropods, it was reasonably compact — sitting down someplace in between an African and Indian elephant in size.
These teeth have been also replaceable (like sharks’ teeth), that means Nigersaurus constantly required new teeth as older ones were worn down or shed.
Skeletal diagram exhibiting recognized things and sizing comparison Sereno as well as the American palaeontologist Jeffrey A. Wilson supplied the main comprehensive description with the skull and feeding adaptations in 2005.[one] In 2007, a more thorough description from the skeleton was released by Sereno ad colleagues, depending on a specimen discovered ten yrs earlier. The fossils, in addition to a reconstructed skeleton mount and a plastic design of The pinnacle and neck, had been subsequently introduced within the National Geographic Modern society in Washington.
” Our initial 7 days in the sphere has been stunning! Extraordinary discoveries seem to be expecting us about each individual dune. On our initial working day, we discovered bones in the prolonged-necked dinosaur Nigersaurus. Nigersaurus, you could don't forget, we named for bones gathered on the final expedition below a few decades ago.
After the iguanodontian Lurdusaurus, Nigersaurus was the most various megaherbivore. Other herbivores with the similar formation involve Ouranosaurus, Elrhazosaurus, and an unnamed titanosaur. Jointly, these compose one of many few associations of megaherbivores with a harmony of sauropods and huge ornithopods.
The Nigersaurus, with its staggering five hundred teeth, presents an interesting distinction to its dinosaur family, especially other sauropods. As opposed to its cousins with less, thicker teeth, the Nigersaurus’s slender, pencil-like teeth were being uniquely tailored for snipping delicate vegetation, a stark difference in the strong teeth of sauropods like Brachiosaurus, which Nigersaurus have been most likely meant to deal with more durable vegetation.
Nigersaurus was named and explained in more element by Sereno and colleagues only in 1999, according to stays of newly located individuals. Precisely the same article also named Jobaria, A further sauropod from Niger. The genus name Nigersaurus ("Niger reptile") is usually a reference into the region where it was discovered, and the particular title taqueti honours Taquet, who was the initial to organise huge-scale palaeontological expeditions to Niger.
The nickname "dinosaur with 500 teeth" comes from Nigersaurus's distinctive dental battery. Its jaw held about 500 slender teeth, arranged in tightly packed rows, and these teeth ended up continuously changed all through its life.