Dinosaurs / Cretaceous / Nigersaurus
Nigersaurus
Cretaceous nee-zher-SAWR-us, “Niger lizard”
Nigersaurus was a small, highly specialised sauropod dinosaur that lived in west Africa during the Early Cretaceous, around 115 million years ago. Measuring around nine metres long and weighing roughly two to four tonnes, it was exceptionally lightweight for a sauropod. Its skeleton was intensely pneumatic, featuring paper-thin bones throughout its skull and vertebrae. Its most famous adaptation was its bizarre muzzle: a straight, wide snout packed with hundreds of replaceable teeth lined up across the front of the jaw. This allowed it to crop soft ground plants like a Cretaceous lawnmower. Studies of its inner ear suggest its head was habitually tilted downwards towards the ground to facilitate low grazing.
It possessed over five hundred slender teeth arranged in a broad, squared vacuum-cleaner-shaped dental battery.
Where and when
Nigersaurus lived in the Early Cretaceous, from 119 to 113 million years ago (Aptian age). Its remains come from Niger, in the Elrhaz Formation.
The numbers
Length 9.5 m (estimates run from 9 to 10 m). Mass about 2.8 t. Hip height about 2.2 m. That is 5.6 human-lengths, or 0.85 of a double-decker bus. These are estimates from partial skeleton; fields marked estimated by the site are length, mass, hip height.