Following the iguanodontian Lurdusaurus, Nigersaurus was one of the most various megaherbivore. Other herbivores from your exact development incorporate Ouranosaurus, Elrhazosaurus, and an unnamed titanosaur. Together, these compose among the list of couple associations of megaherbivores with a balance of sauropods and enormous ornithopods.
Due to the fact many rebbachisaurids inhabited latitudes that might are already tropical to subtropical in the Middle Cretaceous, this pneumaticity might have aided the animals cope Together with the extremely high temperatures. In line with Ibiricu and colleagues, this adaptation could be a purpose why rebbachisaurids ended up the only team of diplodocoids that survived into the Late Cretaceous.[21]
Yet a third sauropod, the South American Antarctosaurus, may or may not have been a kissing cousin in addition.
Nigersaurus, a rebbachisaurid sauropod from the center Cretaceous period of time, was discovered during the Elrhaz Development in Niger. Its identify, which means “Niger’s lizard,” was given next the invention of a lot more full remains in 1999, Even though its fossils were initially explained in 1976.
Skeletal diagram demonstrating recognised aspects and dimensions comparison Sereno plus the American palaeontologist Jeffrey A. Wilson supplied the primary in-depth description with the cranium and feeding adaptations in 2005.[1] In 2007, a more in-depth description with the skeleton was printed by Sereno advertisement colleagues, based upon a specimen found out ten years previously. The fossils, along with a reconstructed skeleton mount and also a plastic product of The top and neck, were subsequently presented within the National Geographic Modern society in Washington.
In 1997, when paleontologist Paul Sereno to start with started to unearth the stays of the dinosaur in Niger's Sahara Desert, he didn’t know what to Consider. He was excavating bones in a dry area identified as Gadoufaoua, which experienced a loaded fossil bed initial learned by French uranium miners.
As we’ve seen, Nigersaurus had a wide muzzle and numerous teeth completely suited for consuming small-lying crops. This diet and Way of living would've expected the creature to have a regular supply of replacement teeth, mainly because it would've worn out its tooth crowns speedily. A research printed inside the journal PLOS 1
Wedel and said in 2016 that whilst sauropods generally speaking could use their extensive necks to detect predators from afar, This is able to not apply to the short-necked Nigersaurus. They identified that the eyes of Nigersaurus were put even more in direction of the top of the cranium than in many other sauropods, above the muzzle, which might give it overlapping fields of look at. Its visual industry might have been at or close to 360 levels, and hypersensitivity of movement would have been essential to a susceptible prey-animal.[twenty]
Life restoration Nigersaurus was distinctive in that its dorsal (back) vertebrae had paired pneumatic spaces at the base from the neural spines (the spines that projected upwards with the vertebrae). The presacral vertebrae (vertebrae what dinosaur has 500 teeth before the sacrum) ended up intensely pneumatised to the point exactly where the column consisted of a series of hollow "shells", Each and every divided by a thin septum in the middle. It had tiny to no cancellous bone, generating the centra skinny bone plates full of air Areas. The vertebral arches were so intensely pierced by extensions of the exterior air sacs that of their facet walls minor remained but two mm (0.
The jaws could possibly have borne a keratinous sheath. Not like other tetrapods, the tooth-bearing bones of its jaws were rotated transversely relative to the rest of the skull, so that all of its teeth ended up Positioned much to your front. Its skeleton was really pneumatised (stuffed with air spaces linked to air sacs), although the limbs had been robustly built.
Its feeding model continues to be as compared to that of recent grazing animals or even a vacuum cleaner, mainly because it probably swept its head facet-to-aspect although consuming vegetation.
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Nigersaurus is understood to have lived in what is now contemporary-day Niger, Africa, as a result its name. It was initial discovered while in the early 2000s by a workforce of paleontologists led by Paul Sereno.
In 2017, the Argentinian palaeontologist Lucio M. Ibiricu and colleagues examined the postcranial skeletal pneumaticity inside the skeletons of rebbachisaurids, and advised that it had been an adaptation for decreasing the density of your skeleton, and this could have reduced the muscle Vitality necessary to transfer the body, as well as the heat created in the procedure.