Nigersaurus was named following the West African place the place its fossils happen to be discovered: The Republic of Niger. Back again when this animal roamed, forests and braided rivers lined the landscape. (Nigersaurus would've had to watch out for Sarcosuchus, a large relative of contemporary crocodiles.)
Considering the fact that many rebbachisaurids inhabited latitudes that may are already tropical to subtropical in the center Cretaceous, this pneumaticity can have aided the animals cope with the really superior temperatures. In line with Ibiricu and colleagues, this adaptation may be a purpose why rebbachisaurids have been the only real group of diplodocoids that survived in to the Late Cretaceous.[21]
Regardless of its smaller sized dimensions, Nigersaurus is notable for its distinctive adaptations, specifically its specialised teeth and feeding mechanisms, which distinguish it in paleontological scientific tests.
The authors for that reason cautioned versus applying semicircular canals as proxy to infer the exact orientation of skulls. They uncovered that food plan correlated strongly with semicircular canal orientation, although not with head posture, though head posture and semicircular canal orientation ended up strongly correlated with phylogeny.[twenty five]
There have been discussion on regardless of whether its head was habitually held downwards, or horizontally like other sauropods. It lived inside of a riparian habitat, and its eating plan possibly consisted of soft crops, for example ferns, horsetails, and angiosperms. It is The most frequent fossil vertebrates located in the region, and shared its habitat with other dinosaurian megaherbivores, and also big theropods and crocodylomorphs.
In 2019, Mannion and colleagues pointed out that considering that Nigersaurus was identified to be the sister taxon of all other nigersaurines in a few experiments, a Rebbachisaurinae clade might not automatically contain Nigersaurus itself (in addition to the fact that the placement of Rebbachisaurus could improve in potential analyses), and supported the continued use in the title Nigersaurinae around Rebbachisaurinae for all rebbachisaurids much more carefully relevant to Nigersaurus than to Limaysaurus.
The immediate substitution of its teeth, each 14 days, suggests that the Nigersaurus confronted significant evolutionary pressures to maintain a relentless provide of practical teeth to cope with abrasive plant materials. This adaptation underlines the evolutionary critical to improve feeding efficiency in an atmosphere exactly where foods resources different and Competitors was fierce.
This rapid tooth replacement, with new teeth expanding each 14 days, ensured it maintained sharp edges for grazing on gentle vegetation. The distinctive dental arrangement produced it extremely effective at processing minimal-lying plants, contributing to its track record as a specialized herbivore.
Placing jointly these odd anatomical details, Nigersaurus appears to have been effectively tailored to small browsing; probably it swept its neck back and forth parallel to the bottom, hoovering up any vegetation within just effortless access. (Other sauropods, which had for much longer necks, may perhaps have nibbled on the large branches of trees, while even this continues to be a matter of some dispute.)
The skull of a Nigersaurus was manufactured from slender bones and experienced lots of modest openings and pores. These options presented them excellent overall flexibility in feeding on the bottom. The muzzle in the Nigersaurus was large and extended which helped it in taking in little floor-primarily based vegetation.
Nigersaurus and its closest family members are grouped in the subfamily Rebbachisaurinae (previously considered grouped in the eponymous Nigersaurinae) in the family members Rebbachisauridae, which happens to be A part of the sauropod superfamily Diplodocoidea. Nigersaurus was possibly Nigersaurus a browser, and fed with its head near the bottom. The location of its brain that detected scent was underdeveloped, although its brain dimension was similar to that of other dinosaurs.
In 2020, the French palaeontologist Julien Benoit and colleagues tested lateral semicircular canal correlation to head posture on modern-day mammals, and located that when there was major correlation amongst the reconstructed and true head postures, the plane of the semicircular canal wasn't held horizontally while in the resting pose as inferred.
But that’s not all; inside its oddly formed muzzle, the dinosaur was equipped with no less than five hundred teeth (equally “Energetic” and replacement). The upper jaws contained 60 rows of small, needle-shaped teeth, though the lower jaws experienced no less than sixty eight quite sharp teeth.
Utilizing proof from CT scans and 3D/Laptop or computer modeling, scientists have decided that the sauropod very likely habitually held its head downwards, towards the ground — Even though This can be hotly debated.