The remains of Nigersaurus had been at first explained by Taquet in 1976 as belonging to a dicraeosaurid, but in 1999 Sereno and colleagues reclassified it as a rebbachisaurid diplodocoid.[four] These scientists speculated that due to the fact shorter necks and compact sizing was acknowledged between basal diplodocoids, it could reveal these have been ancestral features of the team.

By way of a painstaking method, this workforce was in a position to reconstruct the inside of Nigersaurus' cranium. That gave them a great consider the lateral semicircular canal (LSC) with the internal ear, which can help animals continue to keep their stability.

Nigersaurus lived in what has become the Sahara Desert during the mid-Cretaceous period, roughly a hundred and fifteen to one hundred and five million a long time in the past, within a lush, riverine habitat with plentiful vegetation.

Considering the fact that numerous rebbachisaurids inhabited latitudes that would are tropical to subtropical in the Middle Cretaceous, this pneumaticity can have assisted the animals cope Along with the incredibly higher temperatures. In keeping with Ibiricu and colleagues, this adaptation may be a cause why rebbachisaurids ended up the only real team of diplodocoids that survived in to the Late Cretaceous.[21]

Nigersaurus and its closest family members are grouped in the subfamily Rebbachisaurinae (formerly regarded as grouped within the eponymous Nigersaurinae) of the relatives Rebbachisauridae, which can be Element of the sauropod superfamily Diplodocoidea. Nigersaurus was almost certainly a browser, and fed with its head near the ground. The location of its brain that detected scent was underdeveloped, Though its brain sizing was similar to that of other dinosaurs.

Like other sauropods, Nigersaurus had a long neck and tail. On the other hand, its neck was comparatively brief in comparison to other users of its team, aligning with its minimal-grazing lifestyle. Its columnar legs supported its quadrupedal posture and helped bear its pounds properly.

Nigersaurus experienced about five hundred teeth arranged in dental batteries (rows of teeth stacked on other rows of teeth), which authorized it to successfully graze on minimal-lying vegetation like ferns and horsetails. Worn teeth had been continuously changed to take care of Niversaurus' powerful feeding.

Although other significant animals examined (which include rhinoceroses) experienced thick and variable bone cortices, the cortex of Nigersaurus was alternatively thin. These researchers prompt the microanatomy of sauropods wasn't impacted by drastic selective tension because of bearing bodyweight, but that attributes such as the columnar limbs (as observed in elephants), pneumaticity, and fleshy foot pads and cartilage calm strain on the bones. They also advised that Nigersaurus sauropods could for that reason are lighter in body weight than envisioned for his or her dimensions, supporting the bottom human body mass estimates for these dinosaurs.[22]

Many Nigersaurus specimens collected by French and American expeditions keep on being to get explained.[9] Teeth similar to those of Nigersaurus happen to be found over the Isle of Wight As well as in Brazil, however it is unidentified whether they belonged to relatives of the taxon, or to titanosaurs, whose continues to be are already present in the vicinity.

The authors as a result cautioned from applying semicircular canals as proxy to infer the specific orientation of skulls. They found that diet plan correlated strongly with semicircular canal orientation, but not with head posture, while head posture and semicircular canal orientation ended up strongly correlated with phylogeny.[25]

Nigersaurus are well-known dinosaurs for having five hundred slender teeth in their jaw. These dinosaurs happen to be identified not long ago from the calendar year 2000 and ended up named in the distinction of region “Niger”. The word Nigersaurus has two components; Niger (state identify), and Saurus (reptile).

On The premise of microtomography scans of skull factors from the holotype specimen, Sereno and colleagues developed a "prototype" Nigersaurus skull they could take a look at. Additionally they produced an endocast from the Mind and scanned the semicircular canals of its interior ear, which they located to become oriented horizontally. In their 2007 review, they said which the composition on the occiput at the back of the cranium and cervical vertebrae would've confined the upward and downward movement from the neck and the rotation in the skull.

Horsetails (Equisetum) Possess a central, hollow stem with whorls of leaves or skinny branches. They hold their spores inside a cigar-formed “cone” at the highest of your plant. Horsetails date back again to ~370 million a long time in the past. Through the start of the dinosaur era they grew to generally be almost 30 feet tall (10m.)

[13] Because of the lateral orientation from the teeth, it most likely would not have been able to chew.[one] Nigersaurus wore its tooth crowns down more rapidly than other dinosaurian herbivores,[3] and its tooth alternative level was the best of any regarded dinosaur. Every single tooth was replaced as soon as each fourteen times; the rate had Beforehand been believed lessen. In distinction to Nigersaurus, sauropods with decreased tooth substitute charges and broader tooth crowns are thought to are actually Cover browsers.[twelve]