The Air Evident Nigersaurus stayed underneath the radar for really some time. The very first recognized fossils belonging to this animal ended up recovered throughout the fifties by French paleontologists in the Nigerian Sahara. Regretably, A large number of bones have been isolated or fragmentary.
Named once the place of Niger, exactly where its fossils ended up initial observed. The name was decided on to reflect its origins, even so, the similarity in pronunciation to some racial slur has elevated issues about cultural sensitivity and acceptable terminology.
Original discoveries of Nigersaurus fossils day again into the 1960s, nevertheless it was not right up until the seventies that much more full remains were uncovered. These remains ended up formally examined and explained by paleontologist Paul Sereno and his crew in 1999.
These teeth were also replaceable (like sharks’ teeth), this means Nigersaurus frequently essential clean teeth as older kinds were worn down or dropped.
There was debate on regardless of whether its head was habitually held downwards, or horizontally like other sauropods. It lived within a riparian habitat, and its diet program most likely consisted of soppy plants, for example ferns, horsetails, and angiosperms. It really is Probably the most prevalent fossil vertebrates discovered in the region, and shared its habitat with other dinosaurian megaherbivores, along with large theropods and crocodylomorphs.
Just after conducting a biomechanical Evaluation, one particular workforce of scientists concluded that the head and muzzle ended up habitually oriented 67° downwards and close to the ground as a consequence of adaptation for ground-degree searching.
Following the iguanodontian Lurdusaurus, Nigersaurus was probably the most many megaherbivore. Other herbivores within the similar formation include things like Ouranosaurus, Elrhazosaurus, and an unnamed titanosaur. With each other, these compose among the few associations of megaherbivores that has a stability of sauropods and large ornithopods.
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Paleontologist Paul Sereno described Nigersaurus as “the weirdest dinosaur I’ve at any time witnessed” once the dinosaur’s uncommon features were first learned in 2007. The teeth ended up notably noteworthy simply because they had been organized in dental batteries, which are usually found in beaked herbivores like Triceratops and Edmontosaurus, but are rare amid sauropods.
He found a lot of fossils from Elrhaz formations in Niger. Among the These fossils, he identified fossils of a different dinosaur species that is named Nigersaurus (“Niger Reptile”). He together with other paleontologists gathered lots of bony areas of Nigersaurus independently and assembled a tough skeleton.
Its feeding design and style is in comparison to that of contemporary grazing animals or perhaps a vacuum cleaner, since it likely swept its head aspect-to-aspect while consuming vegetation.
Even though other heavy animals examined (like rhinoceroses) had thick and variable bone cortices, the cortex of Nigersaurus was relatively slender. These scientists prompt the microanatomy of sauropods was not affected by drastic selective tension attributable to bearing body weight, but that capabilities like the Nigersaurus columnar limbs (as noticed in elephants), pneumaticity, and fleshy foot pads and cartilage calm tension within the bones. Additionally they instructed that sauropods may consequently have already been lighter in body weight than envisioned for their measurement, supporting the bottom overall body mass estimates for these dinosaurs.[22]
Dental batteries are a novel adaptation present in some plant-taking in dinosaurs that allowed them to efficiently system challenging vegetation. These batteries consist of vertically stacked columns of teeth, with the major tooth in Every single column getting changed since it wears out.
The Nigersaurus was a ground-amount browser. Its extensive muzzle, combined with its many teeth, authorized it to absorb massive amounts of vegetation in an individual Chunk. The orientation of its teeth, all positioned in the entrance of its jaws, enabled it to successfully crop and Obtain foods close to the bottom.