Right after conducting a biomechanical Assessment, one particular workforce of scientists concluded that the head and muzzle ended up habitually oriented sixty seven° downwards and close to the bottom on account of adaptation for ground-amount browsing.
Via a painstaking procedure, this workforce was capable to reconstruct The within of Nigersaurus' skull. That gave them a great consider the lateral semicircular canal (LSC) with the inner ear, which helps animals maintain their equilibrium.
Nigersaurus lived in what is currently the Sahara Desert in the course of the mid-Cretaceous time period, about 115 to a hundred and five million many years in the past, in the lush, riverine habitat with abundant plant life.
In Nigersaurus' case, the upper jaws contained sixty columns of tiny, needle-formed higher teeth. And no much less than 68 very sharp teeth had been present to the lower jaws. Tallied together, higher jaw and decreased jaw, the beast had a lot more than 500 individual teeth.
We meticulously brushed the sand from the a hundred and ten million-year-aged bones and dug channels amongst the key parts of the skeleton. Shortly we will deal with Every space in plaster so which the skeleton could be transported away from the field and back again to the laboratory.
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Nigersaurus's feeding strategy was as opposed to a number of other dinosaurs. Its broad, flat jaw was tailored for grazing near the ground, earning it the nickname "Mesozoic Cow."
Nigersaurus is ideal recognized for its exclusive skull and jaw, which contained around five hundred slender teeth arranged in tightly packed rows. These teeth ended up specialized for grazing on small-lying vegetation, producing Nigersaurus a hugely successful herbivore.
The teeth’s exceptional form and arrangement were flawlessly suited to its feeding patterns. The slender, chisel-like teeth could competently snip off comfortable vegetation, as well as their swift substitution ensured that the dinosaur could continually feed devoid of awaiting new teeth to expand.
Nigersaurus is considered to behave much like other herbivore sauropods. They had in all probability used most of their time in hang-dog positions and grazing lower-lying vegetation.
But that’s not all for Nigersaurus. Chris took us all to the flat space of purple-coloured sandstone where by he experienced Positioned the upper jaw of a infant Nigersaurus—just one that may healthy on top of a Nigersaurus silver greenback!
The Nigersaurus, with its staggering 500 teeth, offers an interesting distinction to its dinosaur family members, Particularly other sauropods. In contrast to its cousins with less, thicker teeth, the Nigersaurus’s slender, pencil-like teeth were uniquely adapted for snipping soft vegetation, a stark distinction in the sturdy teeth of sauropods like Brachiosaurus, which have been most likely created to handle more durable vegetation.
We very carefully brushed the sand off the 110 million-year-aged bones and dug channels concerning the foremost parts of the skeleton. Shortly We'll go over Each and every region in plaster so that the skeleton is often transported away from the sector and back to the laboratory.
The sauropod's jaw seems to be Nearly like a substantial nail clipper, with huge rows of a huge selection of teeth on its higher and reduce jaws. It Just about didn’t manage to match into its skull when Sereno was wanting to piece it together.