WEBVTT - How Did Nigersaurus Work?

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<v Speaker 1>Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey

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<v Speaker 1>brain Stuff, Lauren Bogelbaum. Here mesozoic cow sounds like a

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<v Speaker 1>joke cribbed from Gary Lawson's The Far Side, But it's not.

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<v Speaker 1>That nickname was given to the African dinosaur Nigrosaurus to

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<v Speaker 1>ka back when some new discoveries about its appearance were

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<v Speaker 1>made public in two thousand seven. Speaking to NPR at

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<v Speaker 1>the time, paleontologist Pulse Orino called Nigrosaurus the weirdest dinosaur

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<v Speaker 1>I've ever seen. He then compared its face to a

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<v Speaker 1>vacuum cleaner and unorthodox herb. Before this red pile grazed

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<v Speaker 1>and what's now the Sahara Desert some a hundred ten

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<v Speaker 1>million years ago. It gathered food with a big broad mouth.

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<v Speaker 1>The creatures snout was wider than the back of its head,

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<v Speaker 1>and Nitrosaurus had teeth to spare hundreds. In fact, a

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<v Speaker 1>Nitrosaurus was a little over twenty nine feet or around

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<v Speaker 1>nine meters long by the most liberal estimates, It weighed

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<v Speaker 1>roughly four and a half tons or four metric tons,

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<v Speaker 1>and so overall the dinosaur was about the size of

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<v Speaker 1>a modern African elephant. There's just one caveat you see.

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<v Speaker 1>Nitrosaurus was soro pod, one of the major dinosaurian groups.

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<v Speaker 1>The plant eating small headed sauropods hung around for about

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<v Speaker 1>a hundred and forty million years. Their ranks included the

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<v Speaker 1>largest animals to ever walk the earth. Experts say the

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<v Speaker 1>biggest species may have been over a hundred and ten

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<v Speaker 1>feet that's thirty three meters long, and meanwhile, forty eight

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<v Speaker 1>five foot or twelve to sixteen meter sauropods are common

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<v Speaker 1>throughout some parts of the fossil record. In comparison, Nitrosaurus

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<v Speaker 1>was on the small side, but what caught everyone's attention

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<v Speaker 1>was the dinosaurs. Mug Sereno's vacuum cleaner comparison is right

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<v Speaker 1>on the money. Viewed from above, Nitrosaurus's wide muzzle looks

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<v Speaker 1>like the the end of one of these household appliances.

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<v Speaker 1>But those jaws held something never before seen in a

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<v Speaker 1>sore pod. Dinosaur tooth or dental batteries. We're not talking

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<v Speaker 1>about double a duras l s here. Dental batteries were

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<v Speaker 1>efficient food processing tools used by many plant eating dinos.

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<v Speaker 1>They consisted of vertically stacked columns of replaceable teeth. Whenever

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<v Speaker 1>the top tooth wore out in any given column, the

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<v Speaker 1>one right below it would move upwards and take the

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<v Speaker 1>old tooth spot. And those tooth columns were packed right

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<v Speaker 1>alongside each other like canned sardines, so a dinosaur armed

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<v Speaker 1>with dental batteries could comfortably house several hundred teeth old

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<v Speaker 1>and new inside its mouth. In Nitrosaurus's case, the upper

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<v Speaker 1>jaws contained sixty columns of small needle shaped teeth, and

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<v Speaker 1>no fewer than sixty eight were present on the lower jaws.

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<v Speaker 1>Tallied together, the beast had more than five hundred individual teeth.

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<v Speaker 1>Dinosaur hunters are used to finding dental batteries and beaked

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<v Speaker 1>herbivores like the horned triceratops, but they're rare among the sauropods,

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<v Speaker 1>and too. The orientation is just as important as tooth quantity.

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<v Speaker 1>Ask anyone who's ever needed races me included all the

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<v Speaker 1>tooth columns in Nigrosaurus is dental batteries were lined up

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<v Speaker 1>at the very front of its mouth, a position along

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<v Speaker 1>the muzzles gently curved outer edge. So what's the dinosaur

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<v Speaker 1>to do with choppers like these? Nibbling on treetops probably

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<v Speaker 1>wasn't an option. Nigrosaurus wasn't just small bodied for a sauropod.

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<v Speaker 1>It also had a fairly short neck and no The

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<v Speaker 1>evidence suggests Nigrosaurus fed at ground level, sort of like

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<v Speaker 1>a cow. Nigrosaurus was named after the West African country

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<v Speaker 1>where its fossils have been found, the Republic of Niger.

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<v Speaker 1>Back when this animal reamed, forests and braided rivers covered

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<v Speaker 1>the landscape, that wide muzzle was perfect scooping up ferns, horsetails,

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<v Speaker 1>and other low lying plants, and with its bountiful teeth,

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<v Speaker 1>the dinosaur would have had no trouble shearing through this vegetation.

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<v Speaker 1>Eating like that can be rough on your dental health.

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<v Speaker 1>Nigrosaurus must have worn out its tooth crowns at a

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<v Speaker 1>rapid fire pace. Good thing it had a constant supply

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<v Speaker 1>of fresh teeth. According to a study published in the

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<v Speaker 1>journal Plos one, Nigrosaurus likely replaced each new tooth after

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<v Speaker 1>just fourteen days. Because Nitrosaurus ate with its head down,

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<v Speaker 1>experts have wondered about its posture. Sereno and his co

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<v Speaker 1>authors once argued that the herbivore aimed its face and

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<v Speaker 1>neck downwards whether it was feeding or not. As a

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<v Speaker 1>matter of habit. Through a painstaking process, this team was

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<v Speaker 1>able to reconstruct the inside of Nitrosaurus's skull, and that

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<v Speaker 1>gave them a good look at the lateral semicircular canal

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<v Speaker 1>or LSC of the inner ear, which helps animals keep

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<v Speaker 1>their balance. Judging by the l SC orientation in Nigersaurus,

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<v Speaker 1>Sereno and company hypothesized that the animal usually walked around

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<v Speaker 1>with its snamp pointed at the ground at a sixty

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<v Speaker 1>seven degree angle. A picture of moping teenager and you'll

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<v Speaker 1>get the idea. Other researchers have disputed this claim, though

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<v Speaker 1>studies released in two thousand nineteen found that the position

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<v Speaker 1>of the LSC can't reliably tell us what any given

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<v Speaker 1>sauropods normal head posture would have looked like. Nitrosaurus stayed

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<v Speaker 1>under the radar for quite a while. The first known

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<v Speaker 1>fossils belonging to this animal were recovered during the nineteen

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<v Speaker 1>fifties by French paleontologists in the Nigerian Sahara. Unfortunately, most

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<v Speaker 1>of these bones were isolated or fragmentary. Scientists working at

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<v Speaker 1>the time didn't even bother to give the sauropod a name.

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<v Speaker 1>Things got more interesting in that's when a member of

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<v Speaker 1>Sereno's field team noticed some Nigrosaurus skull bones. Over the

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<v Speaker 1>course of two expeditions, enough material was found to reconstruct

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<v Speaker 1>about eight percent of the beast's skeleton. And what a

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<v Speaker 1>skeleton it was. The newfound fossils gave us our first

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<v Speaker 1>look at the dino's complicated dental batteries and vacuum cleaner mouth.

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<v Speaker 1>Sereno named the species Nigrosaurus to k e as an

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<v Speaker 1>homage to paleontologist Philippe to kay In. Scientists probably would

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<v Speaker 1>have found more Nitrosaurus remains a whole lot sooner if

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<v Speaker 1>it hadn't been for the animal's fragile bone structure. A

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<v Speaker 1>to quote a two thousand seven Sereno led study, this

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<v Speaker 1>critter had a featherweight skull, several bones, and Nigrosaurus's head

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<v Speaker 1>were under zero point zero eight inches thick that's two millimeters,

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<v Speaker 1>and the oddities didn't stop there. Like today's birds, many

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<v Speaker 1>prehistoric dinosaurs had hollow bones containing air sacks. Nitrosaurus vertebra

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<v Speaker 1>took this to an extreme. Measured by volume, some of

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<v Speaker 1>its backbones actually contained more air than well bone wayfer

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<v Speaker 1>thin fossils aren't the easiest things to preserve and study.

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<v Speaker 1>Hats off to the researchers doing the work today's episode.

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<v Speaker 1>It's based on the article Nigrosaurus the Mesozoic cow with

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<v Speaker 1>more than five teeth on how stuff works dot Com.

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<v Speaker 1>Written by Mark Mancini. Brain Stuff is a production of

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<v Speaker 1>I Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot Com,

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<v Speaker 1>and it's produced by Tyler Clang. Four more podcasts from

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