The Air Clear Nigersaurus stayed underneath the radar for pretty some time. The main recognised fossils belonging to this animal were being recovered in the fifties by French paleontologists from the Nigerian Sahara. Unfortunately, Many of these bones were isolated or fragmentary.
The nickname "dinosaur with five hundred teeth" comes from Nigersaurus's distinctive dental battery. Its jaw held approximately five hundred slender teeth, organized in tightly packed rows, and these teeth ended up continually replaced all through its everyday living.
Irrespective of its scaled-down dimensions, Nigersaurus is notable for its one of a kind adaptations, particularly its specialised teeth and feeding mechanisms, which distinguish it in paleontological scientific tests.
Nigersaurus is a crucial discovery for paleontologists mainly because it helps you to get rid of gentle to the evolution and variety of sauropods in the mid-Cretaceous interval.
The genus Nigersaurus was formally named in 1999 by American paleontologist Paul Sereno and his crew, following the discovery of far more complete remains that authorized for an in depth description from the species.
If accurate, it would starkly distinction with most sauropod reconstructions, displaying the animal Keeping its head horizontally.
We diligently brushed the sand from the a hundred and ten million-12 months-aged bones and dug channels in between the foremost regions of the skeleton. Quickly we will go over Each individual location in plaster so the skeleton is usually transported out of the field and again towards the laboratory.
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These popular dinosaur reconstructions from the 1960s are not scientifically correct. Can you see the glitches?
Its head is what seriously stands out about Nigersaurus, nevertheless. The jaws, which have a flat entrance, are lined with about 500 teeth, which Sereno suggests were being replaceable. These teeth ended up all the exact same in dimension, and he estimates that they almost certainly only lasted about a month or so right before they ended up worn down.
A 2023 research with the French palaeontologist Rémi Lefebvre and colleagues examined the microanatomical structure on the limb bones of Nigersaurus via CT-scans, the 1st this sort of review of the sauropod. Digital sections from the limb bones sampled from people today of various dimensions had been explored to ascertain the array of variation. Significant-weight bearing animals usually have features connected with this affliction, affecting the interior composition from the limb bones, nevertheless the variation among this sort of bones is improperly identified.
The swift tooth replacement suggests that it primarily fed on comfortable, abrasive plants, which would dress in down its teeth quickly.
The journey to uncover the insider what dinosaur has 500 teeth secrets of your Nigersaurus commenced with the primary fossil fragments uncovered while in the seventies within the Elrhaz Development of Niger, but it really wasn’t until eventually 1999 that far more full remains introduced this intriguing dinosaur in to the spotlight. These discoveries introduced paleontologists with equally challenges and alternatives.
What's extra, just like grazing cows these days, these creatures had been plentiful for the duration of their heyday. After the Original discovery, Sereno identified One more Nigersaurus specimen for the duration of an expedition in 2000.