Just after conducting a biomechanical Investigation, just one staff of researchers concluded that The pinnacle and muzzle had been habitually oriented sixty seven° downwards and close to the bottom resulting from adaptation for floor-stage browsing.
Nigersaurus likely made use of its dental batteries to successfully procedure small-lying vegetation like ferns and horsetails, which it collected with its extensive muzzle. It very likely fed at floor stage as a consequence of its limited neck, and its teeth would have worn out immediately from shearing by means of difficult vegetation.
The Air Apparent Nigersaurus stayed underneath the radar for pretty some time. The 1st regarded fossils belonging to this animal had been recovered throughout the 1950s by French paleontologists in the Nigerian Sahara. Regretably, These types of bones ended up isolated or fragmentary.
A 2009 study because of the British palaeontologist Mike P. Taylor and colleagues agreed that Nigersaurus was in a position to feed Along with the downturned head and neck posture proposed via the 2007 review, but contested this was the habitual posture in the animal. The research noted which the "neutral" head and neck posture of recent animals would not automatically correspond for their habitual head posture.
Because of this as one tooth wore down or broke off, another was wanting to just take its place. This immediate tooth substitution cycle, occurring close to just about every 14 days, ensured that Nigersaurus normally had useful teeth to approach its foods.
In spite of its lesser sizing, Nigersaurus is noteworthy for its special adaptations, specially its specialized teeth and feeding mechanisms, which distinguish it in paleontological reports.
In 2019, Mannion and colleagues pointed out that since Nigersaurus was observed for being the sister taxon of all other nigersaurines in a few scientific studies, a Rebbachisaurinae clade may well not essentially include things like Nigersaurus by itself (and also the incontrovertible fact that the situation of Rebbachisaurus could improve in upcoming analyses), and supported the continued use of your title Nigersaurinae around Rebbachisaurinae for all rebbachisaurids a lot more intently associated with Nigersaurus than to Limaysaurus.
The snout was also proportionately shorter, along with the tooth row was in no way prognathous, the snout suggestion not protruding relative to the remainder of your tooth sequence.[1] Nigersaurus was distinctive in that its frontal bone (which shaped Substantially from the cranium-roof) was elongate (much narrower than long), and experienced a marked cerebral fossa (a melancholy on Nigersaurus the floor of this bone Within the head).[4] The maxillary tooth row was in its entirety transversely rotated, its normal rear ninety° everted in the direction of the entrance. This was matched by An analogous rotation of the dentary of your decreased jaw. This transverse orientation in the higher and reduced tooth rows was distinctive to your dinosaur. Because of this configuration, no other tetrapod had all of its teeth Found as significantly to your front as Nigersaurus.[three][4]
The adductor muscle mass of your jaw appears to get connected to your quadrate as opposed to the supratemporal fenestra. Both of those this and one other mastication muscles were most likely weak, and Nigersaurus is believed to obtain had one of several weakest bites of your sauropods.[3] In addition, Based on Whitlock and colleagues in 2011, the tiny, virtually parallel character of your tooth scratches and pits (attributable to grit, which might not be acquired as usually by significant-browsers) reveal that it ate relatively gentle, herbaceous crops including minimal-expanding ferns.
Improved however, Those people tooth columns had been packed correct alongside one another—like canned sardines. So a dinosaur armed with dental batteries could easily house a number of hundred teeth (outdated and new) within its mouth.
Probably the most exclusive functions of Nigersaurus was its rows of small, peg-like teeth, which had been organized inside a straight line alongside the front of its jaws. These teeth ended up consistently replaced all over the dinosaur’s life, enabling it to feed consistently on tough vegetation.
It experienced a broad muzzle stuffed with over five hundred teeth, which had been replaced in a rapid fee: all over each individual fourteen times. The jaws might have borne a keratinous sheath. In contrast to other tetrapods, the tooth-bearing bones of its jaws were being rotated transversely relative to the rest of the skull, so that every one of its teeth ended up Situated considerably for the front.
The sauropod dinosaur Nigersaurus very likely advanced its unusually-shaped head to higher mow prehistoric lawns.
Nigersaurus is thought to have lived in massive herds and can have migrated above long distances in search of food stuff.