It has been 60 years since French paleontologists found the dinosaur’s bones in Saharan Africa, and 10 years since Paul C. Sereno of the University of Chicago began assembling a more complete skeleton. Only now has his team recognized the plant eater’s peculiar anatomy and foraging behavior according to a report in the New York Times.
The researchers reported yesterday that the dinosaur, named Nigersaurus taqueti, had a short neck, delicate bones and a habitual head posture pointed directly toward the ground. This was a ground-level browser like modern cows.
In a journal article and an interview, the paleontologist, Dr. Sereno, said this 30-foot-long dinosaur, with hundreds of teeth in its broad, squared-off jaws, had probably lived on ferns, horsetails and other ground vegetation. The 110 million-year-old species was discovered in Niger and is related to the North American dinosaur Diplodocus.
“We have seen nothing like this dinosaur,” Dr. Sereno said. “It’s a puzzle that says, ‘Figure this out,’ and we think it’s an extreme version of Diplodocus with the minimum amount of body structure it needed.”
The scientists described the Nigersaurus anatomy and behavior in a report to be published next week in PloS ONE, the online journal of the Public Library of Science. Their research was partly financed by the National Geographic Society, which is featuring the results in the December issue of its magazine.
Read it here: A Cow-like Dinosaur Comes into Focus