The name "Nigersaurus" has began controversy and discussion within the scientific community and further than because of its prospective for misinterpretation and unintended connotations.
It even more argued which the orientation of your semicircular canals varies drastically in contemporary species, and is as a result not reliable for identifying head posture.[23] This was supported by the Spanish palaeontologist Jesús Marugán-Lobón and colleagues in a 2013 review that prompt the techniques employed by Sereno's team have been imprecise, and that Nigersaurus habitually held its head like other sauropods.[24]
The stays of Nigersaurus were being to begin with described by Taquet in 1976 as belonging to your dicraeosaurid, but in 1999 Sereno and colleagues reclassified it to be a rebbachisaurid diplodocoid.[four] These scientists speculated that because limited necks and smaller size was identified between basal diplodocoids, it may well reveal these were being ancestral characteristics from the team.
Nigersaurus, a rebbachisaurid sauropod from the middle Cretaceous period, was discovered during the Elrhaz Development in Niger. Its title, which implies “Niger’s lizard,” was provided following the invention of far more full remains in 1999, although its fossils were being initially described in 1976.
The Nigersaurus is a fascinating and exclusive dinosaur that has captured widespread focus, partly as a result of its uncommon features and intriguing nickname as being the "dinosaur with 500 teeth."
These teeth and the shape in the sauropod's cranium possible progressed to aid it munch on crops lower to the ground. Grass wasn’t around nonetheless throughout its time, but Nigersaurus in all probability invested Considerably of its time grazing on a thing like it, sporting down its teeth in no time.
The confined knowledge of the genus was the result of weak preservation of its stays, which arises from your delicate and extremely pneumatic development (full of air Areas linked to air sacs) with the skull and skeleton, consequently causing disarticulation on the fossils. Many of the skull fossils had been so slim that a strong light-weight beam was noticeable by them. Hence, no intact skulls or articulated skeletons are already identified, and these specimens signify the most comprehensive acknowledged rebbachisaurid continues to be.[3][one]
Its cranium was quite specialised for feeding. It experienced 4 huge facet fenestrae, openings during the cranium and slender bones. It had a wide muzzle filled with a lot more than 500 teeth, which had been replaced about each fourteen times. The jaws could possibly have experienced a keratinous sheath, one thing like a wide beak. Nigersaurus is the one regarded tetrapod animal to own had jaws broader in comparison to the cranium and teeth that extended laterally across the entrance.
In 2019, Mannion and colleagues identified that due to the fact Nigersaurus was observed for being the sister taxon of all other nigersaurines in some research, a Rebbachisaurinae clade might not necessarily involve Nigersaurus by itself (along with the fact that the placement of Rebbachisaurus could adjust in potential analyses), and supported the continued use in the identify Nigersaurinae more than Rebbachisaurinae for all rebbachisaurids a lot more carefully related to Nigersaurus than to Limaysaurus.
Due to the fact quite a few rebbachisaurids inhabited latitudes that may have been tropical to subtropical in the Middle Cretaceous, this pneumaticity could possibly have aided the animals cope While using the extremely high temperatures. According to Ibiricu and colleagues, this adaptation may be 500 teeth dinosaur a cause why rebbachisaurids were being the only real team of diplodocoids that survived to the Late Cretaceous.[21]
Though it experienced significant nostrils as well as a fleshy snout, Sereno and colleagues uncovered that Nigersaurus experienced an underdeveloped olfactory region of its brain and so didn't have a complicated sense of scent. Its brain-to-system-mass ratio was normal for any reptile, and more compact than Those people of ornithischians and non-coelurosaurian theropods. The cerebrum comprised about 30% of your Mind volume, as in a number of other dinosaurs.[three] The American palaeoartist Mark Hallett and paleontologist Mathew J.
The snout was also proportionately shorter, as well as the tooth row was by no means prognathous, the snout suggestion not protruding relative to the remainder from the tooth series.[1] Nigersaurus was distinct in that its frontal bone (which fashioned much of the skull-roof) was elongate (much narrower than long), and had a marked cerebral fossa (a despair over the area of this bone Within the head).[4] The maxillary tooth row was in its entirety transversely rotated, its regular rear 90° everted towards the entrance. This was matched by A similar rotation with the dentary with the decreased jaw. This transverse orientation in the upper and reduce tooth rows was distinctive towards the dinosaur. On account of this configuration, no other tetrapod had all of its teeth Situated as far to the entrance as Nigersaurus.[3][4]
Nigersaurus didn't exhibit the same modifications viewed inside the jaws of other dinosaurs with dental batteries, or mammals with elaborate chewing functions. The lessen jaw was L-shaped and divided into the subcylindrical transverse ramus, which contained the teeth, as well as back again ramus, which was far more lightweight and was the location for the vast majority of muscle attachments. It was unique in that the tooth row expanded to the edges from your airplane of the leading ramus from the decrease jaw.
The Nigersaurus, with its staggering 500 teeth, offers a fascinating contrast to its dinosaur family, Primarily other sauropods. As opposed to its cousins with much less, thicker teeth, the Nigersaurus’s slender, pencil-like teeth were being uniquely adapted for snipping comfortable vegetation, a stark difference from your robust teeth of sauropods like Brachiosaurus, which have been possible made to take care of more durable plants.