That wide muzzle with its Nigersaurus teeth was ideal for scooping up ferns, horsetails and other small-lying vegetation. And While using the bountiful teeth, the dinosaur would've had no hassle shearing via this vegetation.
As we keep on to review this intriguing creature, we're reminded of the intricate and diverse paths that evolution will take.
The Air Apparent Nigersaurus stayed beneath the radar for quite some time. The 1st regarded fossils belonging to this animal ended up recovered over the nineteen fifties by French paleontologists inside the Nigerian Sahara. Regrettably, Many of these bones had been isolated or fragmentary.
This sauropod (extensive-necked dinosaur) has an unusual cranium containing as lots of as 500 slender teeth. A major goal of this expedition is to discover the rest of this abnormal dinosaur so we can explain it and reconstruct it for everybody to see.
The dental composition of Nigersaurus supplies invaluable insights to the dietary and ecological adaptations of sauropods. Its exclusive dental arrangement and rapid tooth alternative mechanism spotlight the various evolutionary approaches that dinosaurs used to thrive within their environments.
There have been debate on irrespective of whether its head was habitually held downwards, or horizontally like other sauropods. It lived in a very riparian habitat, and its diet regime likely consisted of sentimental vegetation, like ferns, horsetails, and angiosperms. It is One of the more frequent fossil vertebrates discovered in the area, and shared its habitat with other dinosaurian megaherbivores, and big theropods and crocodylomorphs.
These teeth ended up specialized for efficiently cropping and grinding delicate, reduced-lying vegetation. The dinosaur’s teeth were being regularly changed, with new types expanding each individual fourteen times to maintain functionality.
Its shorter neck might have also been an adaptation to this ground-stage feeding behavior, since it wouldn't are already able to reach high into trees like Several other sauropods.
The adductor muscle from the jaw seems to own hooked up for the quadrate in place of the supratemporal fenestra. Both of those this and the other mastication muscles were probably weak, and Nigersaurus is believed to get experienced one of the weakest bites in the sauropods.[3] In addition, Based on Whitlock and colleagues in 2011, the smaller, approximately parallel nature from the tooth scratches and pits (because of grit, which might not be attained as often by higher-browsers) reveal that it ate reasonably delicate, herbaceous vegetation for example lower-increasing ferns.
” Our first week in the sphere has been what dinosaur has 500 teeth amazing! Outstanding discoveries seem to be awaiting us around each dune. On our initial day, we located bones from the very long-necked dinosaur Nigersaurus. Nigersaurus, you would possibly recall, we named for bones gathered on the final expedition listed here 3 many years in the past.
But that’s not all for Nigersaurus. Chris took us all into a flat space of purple-coloured sandstone where by he had located the upper jaw of the toddler Nigersaurus—a person that would match in addition to a silver greenback!
It had a wide muzzle stuffed with over five hundred teeth, which ended up changed at a swift amount: close to each fourteen days. The jaws may have borne a keratinous sheath. Compared with other tetrapods, the tooth-bearing bones of its jaws ended up rotated transversely relative to the remainder of the skull, so that every one of its teeth were Found considerably into the entrance.
We are not referring to AA Duracells here. Dental batteries were being economical food processing instruments used by numerous plant-consuming dinos.
This revelation originates from The point that, Even with its elongated nostrils, the olfactory (smelling) region of its Mind was relatively smaller for its dimensions. 11. Nigersaurus could in all probability see almost 360 levels whilst feeding