Nigersaurus taqueti
Nigersaurus taqueti was a small sauropod with a genuinely bizarre body plan. At roughly nine metres long it was short for a long-necked plant-eater, and its neck was unusually short as well, built from only thirteen vertebrae.
Nigersaurus
Nigersaurus taqueti
AI-rekonstruktion · Dinofakta / Google Gemini (AI-genererad rekonstruktion © Dinofakta)
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Quick facts
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Weight
1900–4000 kg
Length
9–10 m
Diet
Herbivore
Period
Cretaceous
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1900–4000 kg
9–10 m
Cretaceous
Quadrupedal
1.5–2.2 m
Herbivore
3 recorded fossil finds in Niger. First described in 1999 by Sereno et al..
Sites and counts from the Paleobiology Database
The timeline shows the whole age of dinosaurs – and how much time has passed since. The glowing part is when Nigersaurus lived.
million years ago
Lived 115–105 million years ago
If the whole age of dinosaurs were a single day, Nigersaurus lived at 18:19.
Chapter • Meet the dinosaur
Nigersaurus taqueti was a small sauropod with a genuinely bizarre body plan. At roughly nine metres long it was short for a long-necked plant-eater, and its neck was unusually short as well, built from only thirteen vertebrae. The strangest part was the skull: it was extremely lightly built, with bony struts thinner than a millimetre in places, and the muzzle was wider than the rest of the head. The teeth sat at the very front of the jaws in a straight, transverse row, rather like the cutting bar of a lawnmower – an arrangement unknown in any other land vertebrate. The body rested on four pillar-like legs, and the tail was held clear of the ground. The dentition was equally remarkable. In each jaw the teeth were packed into tight columns, so-called dental batteries, and counting the replacement teeth waiting inside the jaw the animal carried more than five hundred teeth at any one time. Each tooth was replaced roughly every two weeks – the fastest tooth replacement rate known in any dinosaur. The enamel was markedly thicker on the outer face of each tooth than on the inner face, a pattern of wear that fits cropping plant material close to the ground rather than chewing it. Nigersaurus almost certainly grazed on low-growing vegetation: ferns, horsetails, small conifers and early flowering plants growing as a dense mat across the floodplain. CT scanning of the braincase showed that the semicircular canals of the inner ear are oriented in a way that has been interpreted as a habitually downward-facing head posture, consistent with ground-level feeding. That interpretation has since been questioned, because the link between inner-ear orientation and habitual head posture is unreliable in many animals. The low-browsing lifestyle is nonetheless supported independently by the shape of the muzzle and the pattern of tooth wear. The first bones were collected during French expeditions to Gadoufaoua in Niger during the 1960s and 1970s, led by the palaeontologist Philippe Taquet, who described the material without naming it. The species was formally named in 1999 by Paul Sereno and colleagues – the genus after the country of Niger, the species in Taquet's honour. A detailed description, including the first digitally reconstructed sauropod skull, followed in 2007 after new American expeditions to the same locality.
Chapter • Where it lived
Nigersaurus lived about 115–105 million years ago, during the Cretaceous (Aptian–Albian), in what is now the Ténéré Desert of Niger. All confirmed specimens come from the Elrhaz Formation at Gadoufaoua, one of Africa's richest fossil sites. At the time the region was a lush, river-braided floodplain with swamps, ferns, horsetails and conifers. The same beds have yielded Ouranosaurus, Suchomimus and the giant crocodile relative Sarcosuchus.
Chapter • Wild behavior
Cathemeral
Remains of several individuals have been recovered from the same beds at Gadoufaoua, which may indicate that the animals moved together. However, the bones were transported and sorted by rivers, and there are neither trackways nor a genuine bonebed that would demonstrate herding. Group living in Nigersaurus is therefore a plausible but unconfirmed hypothesis.
The muzzle was wider than the back of the skull, a feature unknown in any other sauropod.
Counting replacement teeth, more than 500 teeth were present in the jaws at once.
Individual teeth were replaced about every fourteen days, the fastest known rate for a dinosaur.
The skull bones are so thin – under a millimetre in places – that light passes through them.
Its neck had only thirteen vertebrae and was short for a diplodocoid sauropod.
The species name taqueti honours French palaeontologist Philippe Taquet, who collected the first fossils.
Its skull was among the first dinosaur skulls to be reconstructed digitally from CT scans.
Researchers have jokingly called it the 'Mesozoic cow' because of its grazing lifestyle.
Chapter • Scientific place
Science (AAAS)
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Original description by Sereno et al. (1999) that named Nigersaurus taqueti and placed it among diplodocoid sauropods (Rebbachisauridae).
Open sourcePaleobiology Database
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Lists the recorded fossil occurrences of Nigersaurus taqueti in Niger (Gadoufaoua, Elrhaz Formation) with their geographic coordinates and stratigraphic range.
Open sourceNatural History Museum, London
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Museum profile summarising where and when Nigersaurus lived, i.e. the Early Cretaceous continental setting of what is now Niger.
Open sourcePLOS ONE
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Peer-reviewed snout-shape and tooth-microwear analysis by Whitlock (2011) that infers the low-browsing, ground-level herbivorous feeding of diplodocoids including Nigersaurus.
Open sourcePaleobiology Database
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Extinct taxon; conservation status NE
Open sourcePLOS ONE
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Comprehensive peer-reviewed monographic account by Sereno et al. (2007) of the skull, dental battery, skeleton and Aptian–Albian Elrhaz Formation context of Nigersaurus taqueti.
Open sourcePLOS ONE
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Comprehensive peer-reviewed monographic account by Sereno et al. (2007) of the skull, dental battery, skeleton and Aptian–Albian Elrhaz Formation context of Nigersaurus taqueti.
Open sourcePLOS ONE
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Comprehensive peer-reviewed monographic account by Sereno et al. (2007) of the skull, dental battery, skeleton and Aptian–Albian Elrhaz Formation context of Nigersaurus taqueti.
Open sourcePLOS ONE
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Comprehensive peer-reviewed monographic account by Sereno et al. (2007) of the skull, dental battery, skeleton and Aptian–Albian Elrhaz Formation context of Nigersaurus taqueti.
Open source