The adductor muscle mass from the jaw seems to get connected towards the quadrate rather than the supratemporal fenestra. Both of those this and one other mastication muscles were most likely weak, and Nigersaurus is estimated to obtain experienced one of many weakest bites in the sauropods.[three] Moreover, Based on Whitlock and colleagues in 2011, the small, just about parallel nature of your tooth scratches and pits (a result of grit, which would not be obtained as normally by substantial-browsers) reveal that it ate rather tender, herbaceous plants such as lower-expanding ferns.
Nigersaurus didn't show the identical modifications seen from the jaws of other dinosaurs with dental batteries, or mammals with elaborate chewing capabilities. The reduce jaw was L-shaped and divided in the subcylindrical transverse ramus, which contained the teeth, plus the again ramus, which was far more light-weight and was The situation for many of the muscle mass attachments. It absolutely was distinct in which the tooth row expanded to the perimeters within the airplane of the principle ramus with the decrease jaw.
Beyond its paleontological significance, Nigersaurus has obtained attention on the net because of its title. Some Web memes, specially the "Do not Google" craze, have highlighted the dinosaur as "the a person with 500 teeth.
“Here is the initial sauropod which has a tooth battery,” Sereno suggests, including that its jaw might have been angled downwards as opposed to forwards — Which explains why Sereno experienced this sort of issues fitting the bones collectively initially.
Nigersaurus is thought to behave very similar to other herbivore sauropods. They had possibly invested most in their time in hold-dog positions and grazing small-lying vegetation.
Its exceptional dental framework indicates that it could possibly have had a special feeding system when compared with other sauropods, and its existence in Africa implies that these kind of dinosaurs were being a lot more prevalent than Beforehand imagined.
Having an astonishing five hundred teeth, this dinosaur provides a unique glimpse to the evolutionary adaptations of prehistoric creatures. Enable’s investigate the world of your Nigersaurus and its intriguing dental anatomy.
Nigersaurus (/niːˈʒɛərsɔːrəs, ˈnaɪdʒərsɔːrəs/) is usually a genus of rebbachisaurid sauropod dinosaur that lived through the middle Cretaceous period of time, about one hundred fifteen to a hundred and five million years in the past. It absolutely was uncovered in the Elrhaz Formation in a location known as Gadoufaoua, in Niger.
It had a broad muzzle filled with much more than five hundred teeth, which had been changed in a speedy charge: all over each individual fourteen times. The jaws might have borne a keratinous sheath. Not what dinosaur has 500 teeth like other tetrapods, the tooth-bearing bones of its jaws were being rotated transversely relative to the remainder of the cranium, so that each one of its teeth had been Found significantly on the entrance.
By way of example, its fossils advise that it experienced a large, deep ribcage which will have authorized it to soak up huge quantities of air, facilitating its respiration and furnishing the oxygen it required to maintain its significant system.
Improved however, People tooth columns ended up packed right alongside each other—like canned sardines. So a dinosaur armed with dental batteries could easily residence quite a few hundred teeth (old and new) within its mouth.
In 2020, the French palaeontologist Julien Benoit and colleagues tested lateral semicircular canal correlation to head posture on contemporary mammals, and found that although there was major correlation between the reconstructed and actual head postures, the plane from the semicircular canal wasn't held horizontally during the resting pose as inferred.
Wafer-slender fossils with thin bone plates aren't the easiest factors to maintain and study. But dag nabit, a person's gotta do it!
People jaws held some thing in no way just before noticed inside a sauropod dinosaur: It was on the list of initial dinosaur skulls with tooth, or "dental," batteries.