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Head's Up! (It's possible) Because Nigersaurus ate with its head down, specialists have wondered about its posture. Sereno and his co-authors as soon as argued that the herbivore aimed its encounter and neck downwards — no matter whether it had been feeding or not — being a subject of practice.
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In Nigersaurus' situation, the higher jaws contained 60 columns of small, needle-formed higher teeth. And no less than 68 quite sharp teeth have been present within the reduced jaws. Tallied alongside one another, higher jaw and decrease jaw, the beast had more than 500 individual teeth.
It lived through a time if the location was lined in forests and braided rivers, and would have needed to Be careful to the existence of Sarcosuchus, a large relative of modern crocodiles.
Nigersaurus, a rebbachisaurid sauropod from the middle Cretaceous period of time, was found out inside the Elrhaz Development in Niger. Its name, which implies “Niger’s lizard,” was given pursuing the discovery of far more finish stays in 1999, Whilst its fossils had been initially described in 1976.
These teeth have been specialised for proficiently cropping and grinding gentle, lower-lying vegetation. The dinosaur’s teeth had been frequently replaced, with new kinds developing every 14 times to keep up functionality.
They consisted of vertically stacked columns of replaceable teeth. Each time the very best tooth wore out in any given column, the one particular appropriate down below it will go upwards and go ahead and take outdated tooth's place.
The adductor muscle mass on the jaw seems to own hooked up to your quadrate in lieu of the supratemporal fenestra. Both equally this and the other mastication muscles were most likely weak, and Nigersaurus is approximated to acquire experienced among the list of weakest bites of your sauropods.[3] In addition, Based on Whitlock and colleagues in 2011, the smaller, approximately parallel mother nature of your tooth scratches and pits (caused by grit, which might not be acquired as often by large-browsers) reveal that it ate rather gentle, herbaceous plants for example small-developing ferns.
Far better yet, Those people tooth columns had been packed correct alongside each other—like canned sardines. So a dinosaur armed with dental batteries could comfortably residence many hundred teeth (outdated and new) inside its mouth.
Probably the most distinctive characteristics of Nigersaurus was its rows of small, peg-like teeth, which were being organized inside of a straight line along the front of its jaws. These teeth have been constantly changed through the dinosaur’s life, enabling it to feed constantly on tricky vegetation.
This framework was between the main dinosaur skulls to get digitally reconstructed employing CT scans, featuring unprecedented insights into its feeding mechanics.
The huge muzzle of Nigersaurus was what dinosaur has 500 teeth probable an adaptation to its lower-lying herbivorous diet plan, permitting it to simply scoop up and Acquire plant content from the ground.
It additional argued which the orientation in the semicircular canals may differ substantially in present day species, and it is therefore not trusted for figuring out head posture.[23] This was supported with the Spanish palaeontologist Jesús Marugán-Lobón and colleagues in a 2013 examine that advised the strategies utilized by Sereno's team have been imprecise, Which Nigersaurus habitually held its head like other sauropods.[24]