That large muzzle with its Nigersaurus teeth was perfect for scooping up ferns, horsetails and various low-lying crops. And While using the bountiful teeth, the dinosaur would've had no problems shearing by way of this vegetation.
Nigersaurus and its closest kin are grouped inside the subfamily Rebbachisaurinae (previously regarded as grouped during the eponymous Nigersaurinae) from the relatives Rebbachisauridae, which is Section of the sauropod superfamily Diplodocoidea. Nigersaurus was possibly a browser, and fed with its head close to the ground. The area of its brain that detected odor was underdeveloped, although its brain size was corresponding to that of other dinosaurs.
Despite its smaller size, Nigersaurus is notable for its unique adaptations, significantly its specialized teeth and feeding mechanisms, which distinguish it in paleontological research.
In usually vibrant style, Sereno described Nigersaurus for a cross involving Darth Vader and a vacuum cleaner and also called it a "Mesozoic cow" (not an inaccurate description, in case you ignore The reality that a complete-developed Nigersaurus calculated thirty feet from head to tail and weighed up to 5 tons!)
By clicking “Accept All Cookies”, you comply with the storing of cookies on your own product to reinforce web page navigation, evaluate internet site usage, and aid inside our promoting initiatives.
‘ skull was increased and Positioned farther above the muzzle when compared with other sauropods. This implies that its visual fields overlapped, leading to a in the vicinity of 360-diploma area of watch (very similar to fashionable cows).
We very carefully brushed the sand off the one hundred ten million-calendar year-aged bones and dug channels in between the key regions of the skeleton. Shortly We are going to deal with Each individual place in plaster so which the skeleton is usually transported outside 500 teeth dinosaur of the sphere and again to your laboratory.
Paleontologists Doing work in Brazil have uncovered the fossil of the ornithuromorph chicken that lived in the Early...
The reconstructed skeleton of a very Strange dinosaur, the plant-feeding on Nigersaurus. This is the sculptural rendition of what the scientists expect the dinosaur's distinct head could possibly have looked like.
When the first fossils of Nigersaurus were being learned in 1976, paleontologists couldn’t identify them as a brand new species. It's since the skeleton fossils were being pretty hollow and distorted.
A 2023 research with the French palaeontologist Rémi Lefebvre and colleagues examined the microanatomical framework in the limb bones of Nigersaurus as a result of CT-scans, the initial these research of the sauropod. Virtual sections from the limb bones sampled from individuals of various sizes had been explored to ascertain the array of variation. Significant-weight bearing animals generally have functions connected to this condition, impacting the inner construction on the limb bones, however the variation concerning such bones is badly regarded.
This Nigersaurus was a hatchling, almost certainly lower than a single calendar year from hatching when it died and was fossilized.
This composition was among the initial dinosaur skulls for being digitally reconstructed utilizing CT scans, featuring unprecedented insights into its feeding mechanics.
Skeletal diagram of Nigersaurus taqueti, illustrating acknowledged fossil factors and dimension comparison with a human, depicting this Cretaceous sauropod's one of a kind Bodily structure