After the iguanodontian Lurdusaurus, Nigersaurus was essentially the most many megaherbivore. Other herbivores from your exact same development include things like Ouranosaurus, Elrhazosaurus, and an unnamed titanosaur. Jointly, these compose on the list of few associations of megaherbivores by using a harmony of sauropods and huge ornithopods.
Nigersaurus and its closest family are grouped in the subfamily Rebbachisaurinae (formerly regarded as grouped from the eponymous Nigersaurinae) of your household Rebbachisauridae, which happens to be Component of the sauropod superfamily Diplodocoidea. Nigersaurus was possibly a browser, and fed with its head near to the bottom. The region of its Mind that detected smell was underdeveloped, While its Mind dimension was comparable to that of other dinosaurs.
A 2023 examine by the French palaeontologist Rémi Lefebvre and colleagues examined the microanatomical framework of the limb bones of Nigersaurus by way of CT-scans, the very first these types of examine of a sauropod. Virtual sections of the limb bones sampled from people today of various dimensions were explored to ascertain the number of variation. Weighty-bodyweight bearing animals often have options linked to this situation, impacting the interior construction with the limb bones, however the variation in between these kinds of bones is improperly known.
Just like other Sauropods, Nigersaurus were herbivores. They had grazed near to the ground and ate low-lying vegetation. That they had a large muzzle which aided them in cropping far more vegetative material in just one bite. You might Imagine they possibly ate grass, nevertheless the grass hadn’t progressed for the duration of that point.
The Nigersaurus is a fascinating and distinctive dinosaur which includes captured popular interest, partly due to its uncommon attributes and intriguing nickname as the "dinosaur with five hundred teeth."
lived in what has become Niger about one hundred fifteen to one zero five million many years back, during the Aptian and Albian ages with the mid-Cretaceous. It very likely lived in habitats dominated by inland floodplains (a riparian zone).
The immediate alternative of its teeth, each individual 14 times, implies which the Nigersaurus confronted significant evolutionary pressures to maintain a relentless supply of functional teeth to cope with abrasive plant substance. This adaptation underlines the evolutionary very important to improve feeding performance in an surroundings where by food stuff sources diversified and competition was intense.
[thirteen] Because of the lateral orientation with the teeth, it likely wouldn't are actually able to chew.[1] Nigersaurus wore its tooth crowns down faster than other dinosaurian herbivores,[3] and its tooth replacement price was the best of any regarded dinosaur. Each individual tooth was changed at the time every 14 times; the speed experienced Beforehand been believed lessen. In distinction to Nigersaurus, sauropods with lessen tooth substitute fees and broader tooth crowns are imagined to are canopy browsers.[12]
This revelation arises from The reality that, Inspite of its elongated nostrils, the olfactory (smelling) region of its brain was fairly small for its dimension. eleven. Nigersaurus could most likely see nearly 360 levels when feeding
The cranium of a Nigersaurus was fabricated from slim bones and had many small openings and pores. These options furnished them good overall Nigersaurus flexibility in feeding on the ground. The muzzle from the Nigersaurus was wide and prolonged which helped it in eating smaller ground-primarily based vegetation.
This allowed the dinosaur to possess a relentless source of refreshing teeth, permitting it to carry on to correctly course of action plant content whilst its teeth wear down.
Wedel and said in 2016 that while sauropods in general could use their long necks to detect predators from afar, This is able to not implement on the quick-necked Nigersaurus. They pointed out which the eyes of Nigersaurus ended up put more toward the highest of your cranium than in many other sauropods, higher than the muzzle, which would give it overlapping fields of watch. Its visual area might have been at or near 360 degrees, and hypersensitivity of movement would have been vital that you a vulnerable prey-animal.[twenty]
Though the nasal bones are certainly not totally recognised, it seems the front margin on the bony nostril was nearer to the snout than in other diplodocoids. The snout was also proportionately shorter, and the tooth row was by no means prognathous, the snout suggestion not protruding relative to the rest with the tooth collection. The maxillary tooth row was in its entirety transversely rotated, its usual rear ninety° everted to the front. This was matched by an identical rotation on the dentary of the decrease jaw. As a result, no other tetrapod had all of its teeth located as much for the entrance as
The authors for that reason cautioned versus using semicircular canals as proxy to infer the precise orientation of skulls. They identified that diet regime correlated strongly with semicircular canal orientation, although not with head posture, though head posture and semicircular canal orientation were strongly correlated with phylogeny.[25]