Product Description
This is an EXTREMELY RARE fossil dinosaur tooth from a DIPLODOCOID sauropod dinosaur of North Africa. It compares very favorably with Nigersaurus that was discovered in Niger from different deposits and the first paper below references an identical tooth to the one we are offering here, supporting that. As of this posting, Nigersaurus is not known from the Kem Kem deposits but much is yet to be studied about North Africa dinosaurs and what is known is FAR from complete and comprehensive. It is reasonable to say that a dinosaur found in the region of present-day Niger could have also lived in the region of southern Morocco and Algeria.
This tooth is round in cross-section with a slight longitudinal furrow on the lingual side and a slight natural feeding wear facet on the tip as is typically seen for this class of dinosaur teeth.
Sauropod fossil dinosaur teeth are rarely discovered in the same fine condition as theropod teeth. Feeding on plant material rather than other struggling dinosaurs, the teeth of herbivorous sauropods were not designed to take punishment like meat-eating dinosaur teeth so their structure is not as durable. The long, peg-like shape of sauropod dinosaur teeth make them vulnerable to damage over time and easy to break apart over millions of years. What this translates to is that plant-eating sauropod dinosaur teeth are seldom found preserved as well as meat-eating dinosaur teeth. Sauropod dinosaur teeth of equal quality, compared to those from a carnivorous dinosaur, are more rare and their absence from the market demonstrates that.
SEE MORE AND LEARN ABOUT SAUROPOD DINOSAUR FOSSILS
HISTORY
Nigersaurus is a genus of rebbachisaurid sauropod dinosaur that lived during the middle Cretaceous period, about 115 to 105 million years ago. It was discovered in the Elrhaz Formation in an area called Gadoufaoua, in the Republic of Niger. Fossils of this dinosaur were first described in 1976, but it was only named Nigersaurus taqueti in 1999, after further and more complete remains were found and described. The genus name means "Niger reptile", and the specific name honours the palaeontologist Philippe Taquet, who discovered the first remains.
Small for a sauropod, Nigersaurus was about 9 metres (30 feet) long, and had a short neck. It weighed around four tonnes, comparable to a modern elephant. Its skeleton was highly pneumatised (filled with air spaces connected to air sacs), but the limbs were robustly built. Its skull was very specialised for feeding, with large fenestrae and thin bones. It had a wide muzzle filled with more than 500 teeth, which were replaced at a rapid rate: around every 14 days. The jaws may have borne a keratinous sheath. Unlike other tetrapods, the tooth-bearing bones of its jaws were rotated transversely relative to the rest of the skull, so that all of its teeth were located far to the front.
Nigersaurus and its closest relatives are grouped within the subfamily Rebbachisaurinae (formerly thought to be grouped in the eponymous Nigersaurinae) of the family Rebbachisauridae, which is part of the sauropod superfamily Diplodocoidea.
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