The Nigersaurus taqueti were living in Africa 110 million years ago. Its skeleton, 80% complete, provided a lot of information about this unique species. Especially when we Google what dinosaur has 500 teeth or what’s the name of 500 teeth dinosaur? Nigersaurus’ name comes to focus.
It had very thin bones, a huge jaw, and an ingenious tooth replacement system. Thanks to an almost complete skeleton, we know much more today about this superb herbivorous dinosaur of the Cretaceous period.
Although it looks a bit odd with its extraordinary big mouth, light skeleton, and almost translucent skull, the Nigersaurus taqueti is hardly a newcomer to the world of paleontology.
The first fossils of this dinosaur had indeed been discovered by expeditions in the 1950s, and truly identified as such, in 1976, by the paleontologist Philippe Taquet. It is in his honor that Paul Sereno, the famous American paleontologist, then named this animal, the Nigersaurus taqueti.
It is thanks to another paleontologist who had spotted a skull of this animal in Niger in 1997, Didier Dutheil, that Paul Sereno and his team were able to find around 80% of the skeleton following two successive expeditions.
Which dinosaur has 500 teeth?
What type of dinosaur has 500 teeth? A Nigersaurus fact that it turns out that the Nigersaurus taqueti must have behaved more like a cow than a giraffe. Indeed, unlike other herbivorous sauropods whose muzzle pointed forward, that of Nigersaurus was directed towards the ground.
Besides, the study of his spine seems to indicate that the beast was unable to lift his head above his back. Moreover, this one was made up of vertebrae so thin and comprising so many hollow areas like the skeleton of birds, that paleontologists wonder how the spine of this animal could withstand the mechanical constraints of the life of every day.
It is probably the skull and its jaw that amaze researchers the most about 500 dinosaur teeth.
Dinosaur with 500 teeth
Nigersaurus jaw consisted of 500 nail-shaped teeth set in 50 columns. This impressive series of teeth was supposed to allow the rapid replacement of worn teeth at a rate of one per month. The animal had to use it as a pair of scissors 30 centimeters long to feed on the plants. According to paleobotanists, it must have been ferns and horsetails.
The skull is so light, with such thin bones, that light passes through them. It is also because of its fragility that it has been so difficult so far to have enough fossils in good condition to make an accurate representation.
Thanks to the tomography and the imprints left by the brain in the skull, it was possible to reconstruct the shape and location of it on a computer.
We can bet that despite their almost complete disappearance for 65 million years, at least in part because of the asteroids, we are not at the end of our surprises with the dinosaurs with 500 teeth.
13 meters long, it has an almost transparent skull and a muzzle in the shape of a vacuum cleaner: despite its very strange and quite frightening appearance Nigersaurus Taqueti, only grazed grass in Africa 110 million ago years.
Its large square jaw with some 500 teeth – to make up for fallen or worn teeth – worked like a vacuum cleaner, allowing it just to meet the needs of its large carcass of 13 meters long.
A carcass surprisingly formed of more void than bone matter, as we discovered with surprise, with the scanner, the American paleontologists having reconstituted its skeleton starting from the bones exhumed since 1950 in Niger.
Thanks to a medical imaging system, the study of this skull made it possible to reconstitute the body postures of the animal on 4 legs, with vertebrae so thin that they did not even allow it to stand up, hence his huge muzzle pointed forward. Nigersaurus Taqueti is the perfect illustration of the trials of nature on the long road of evolution.
When ‘Don’t Google What Dinosaur Had 500 Teeth’ is a joke which spread primarily on Reddit. The Google search for “which dinosaur had 500 teeth” will lead people to the meme, this phrase printed on shirts and mugs.
But when we imagine that 500 teeth dinosaur roamed this world, it takes us to appreciate the efforts of all those scientists who unearthed such amazing discoveries.
Nigersaurus had so many teeth it has been dubbed “the Mesozoic lawnmower. The teeth were narrow, needle-shaped, not bigger than just a few millimeters in width, and packed into an open groove in the jaw. It has jaws that extend to each side of the skull. It is designed to crop plants.
Have a look at the skeleton of a prehistoric dinosaur that is rebuilt inside National Geographic headquarters in this video.
