Even the skies had been occupied – long-winged traveling pterosaurs swooped overhead, from time to time diving down to grab a delicious fish out in the river.
It lived within a riparian habitat, and its diet plan most likely consisted of sentimental vegetation, which include ferns, horsetails, and angiosperms. It can be Just about the most widespread fossil vertebrates uncovered in the region, and shared its habitat with other dinosaurian megaherbivores, and also huge theropods and crocodylomorphs.
There were lots of mild, aerated bones — normally related to theropods, like Tyrannosaurus rex, plus the birds that progressed from them — Therefore the scientists assumed that was what they have been working with.
Nigersaurus, a rebbachisaurid sauropod from the middle Cretaceous period of time, was found inside the Elrhaz Development in Niger. Its identify, which implies “Niger’s lizard,” was given next the invention of additional total remains in 1999, Despite the fact that its fossils were being initially described in 1976.
The dental structure of Nigersaurus gives invaluable insights into your dietary and ecological adaptations of sauropods. Its exclusive dental arrangement and quick tooth replacement mechanism highlight the varied evolutionary techniques that dinosaurs used to thrive in their environments.
Fossil evidence suggests it lived in what is currently the Sahara Desert, feeding on ferns and various vegetation in its lush, riverine habitat.
Once the iguanodontian Lurdusaurus, Nigersaurus was by far the most quite a few megaherbivore. Other herbivores from your same development incorporate Ouranosaurus, Elrhazosaurus, and an unnamed titanosaur. With each other, these compose on the list of number of associations of megaherbivores that has a stability of sauropods and large ornithopods.
Nigersaurus is thought from quite a few partial skeletons and isolated bones, which have presented valuable information regarding its anatomy and actions.
Paleontologist Paul Sereno explained Nigersaurus as “the weirdest dinosaur I’ve ever witnessed” when the dinosaur’s unconventional options had been to start with discovered in 2007. The teeth were being notably noteworthy simply because they were arranged in dental batteries, which are generally present in beaked herbivores like Triceratops and Edmontosaurus, but are scarce between sauropods.
The most exclusive attributes of Nigersaurus was its mouth, which was Outfitted with hundreds of tiny, Nigersaurus tightly packed teeth organized in rows. This permitted it to successfully crop and grind rough plant matter, like ferns and horsetails.
The fragile mother nature with the Nigersaurus’s slender teeth and delicate cranium designed excavation and preservation particularly complicated. Nonetheless, these challenges were being achieved with modern strategies in fossil recovery and 3D reconstruction, allowing for experts to piece together the intricate aspects of its jaw plus the astonishing variety of 500 teeth.
It experienced a brief neck for any sauropod, with thirteen cervical vertebrae. Almost all rebbachisaurids experienced reasonably short necks and a duration of ten m (33 ft) or significantly less. The only real member in the spouse and children that attained the size of much larger sauropods was
Nigersaurus is understood to acquire lived in what has become modern-day-working day Niger, Africa, for this reason its name. It was first identified inside the early 2000s by a crew of paleontologists led by Paul Sereno.
The authors therefore cautioned towards making use of semicircular canals as proxy to infer the precise orientation of skulls. They observed that diet correlated strongly with semicircular canal orientation, but not with head posture, whilst head posture and semicircular canal orientation were being strongly correlated with phylogeny.[twenty five]