He uncovered many fossils from Elrhaz formations in Niger. Among those fossils, he found fossils of a whole new dinosaur species that is known as Nigersaurus (“Niger Reptile”). He along with other paleontologists gathered many bony parts of Nigersaurus individually and assembled a tough skeleton.
Early land vegetation inhabited a warm, humid natural environment. three hundred million several years in the past, several land regions ended up coated in soaked forests of large clubmoss, horsetails and ferns. These seedless vegetation reproduce with spores, which demand humid environments to outlive.
The remains of Nigersaurus were at first described by Taquet in 1976 as belonging into a dicraeosaurid, but in 1999 Sereno and colleagues reclassified it being a rebbachisaurid diplodocoid.[four] These researchers speculated that considering that small necks and small sizing was known among the basal diplodocoids, it may well show these were ancestral features of your team.
In Nigersaurus' scenario, the upper jaws contained 60 columns of compact, needle-formed upper teeth. And no fewer than sixty eight extremely sharp teeth were existing to the decrease jaws. Tallied collectively, higher jaw and decrease jaw, the beast experienced over five hundred particular person teeth.
On the basis of microtomography scans of cranium things with the holotype specimen, Sereno and colleagues designed a "prototype" Nigersaurus skull they could study. Additionally they manufactured an endocast in the Mind and scanned the semicircular canals of its inner ear, which they discovered being oriented horizontally. Of their 2007 examine, they said the construction with the occiput behind the skull and cervical vertebrae would've minimal the upward and downward movement with the neck and also the rotation of the cranium.
Daily life restoration Nigersaurus was unique in that its dorsal (back again) vertebrae had paired pneumatic Areas at the base of the neural spines (the spines that projected upwards from the vertebrae). The presacral vertebrae (vertebrae before the sacrum) were being closely pneumatised to the point exactly where the column consisted of the series of hollow "shells", Each and every divided by a skinny septum in the center. It had small to no cancellous bone, producing the centra slender bone plates crammed with air Areas. The vertebral arches had been so heavily pierced by extensions of your exterior air sacs that of their facet walls minimal remained but two mm (0.
These teeth had been specialised for successfully cropping and grinding gentle, small-lying vegetation. The dinosaur’s teeth have been continually changed, with new types growing just about every 14 times to maintain features.
These teeth ended up also replaceable (like sharks’ teeth), indicating Nigersaurus continually necessary refreshing teeth as older ones were being worn down or dropped.
The adductor muscle mass on the jaw seems to obtain hooked up to the quadrate rather than the supratemporal fenestra. The two this and one other mastication muscles were possible weak, and Nigersaurus is believed to have had one of the weakest bites from the sauropods.[3] Additionally, Based on Whitlock and colleagues in 2011, the compact, nearly parallel character on the tooth scratches and pits (because of grit, which might not be attained as normally by significant-browsers) suggest that it ate rather gentle, herbaceous crops for instance small-escalating ferns.
Nigersaurus was named once the West African nation exactly where its fossils are discovered: The Republic of Niger. Back again when this animal roamed, forests and braided 500 teeth dinosaur rivers coated the landscape. (Nigersaurus would've had to watch out for Sarcosuchus, a large relative of recent crocodiles.)
As compared, Nigersaurus was over the small side. What caught everyone's interest was the dinosaur's mug.
The restricted idea of the genus was the result of very poor preservation of its stays, which arises from your delicate and extremely pneumatic construction (filled with air spaces connected to air sacs) of the skull and skeleton, subsequently producing disarticulation with the fossils. Some of the cranium fossils were being so slender that a robust light-weight beam was obvious as a result of them. Thus, no intact skulls or articulated skeletons are actually identified, and these specimens symbolize one of the most full identified rebbachisaurid stays.[3][1]
The sauropod dinosaur Nigersaurus very likely developed its unusually-formed head to raised mow prehistoric lawns.
It further more argued the orientation with the semicircular canals varies drastically in contemporary species, and is also hence not reliable for identifying head posture.[23] This was supported via the Spanish palaeontologist Jesús Marugán-Lobón and colleagues within a 2013 study that proposed the solutions used by Sereno's crew ended up imprecise, and that Nigersaurus habitually held its head like other sauropods.[24]