what dinosaur has 500 teeth: Did you know that there was one dinosaur with 500 teeth? It was Nigersaurus, a long-necked sauropod with a straight-edged mouth. Besides its 500-toothed grin, Nigersaurus also had some unique characteristics, such as a straight-edged molar. Keep reading to learn more about this amazing creature. And if you like dinosaurs and have an inquisitive mind, try a game of Trivial Pursuit!
Nigersaurus Taqueti
The Nigersaurus is a tiny sauropod with a shortened neck and a wide, shallow mouth. Its skeleton is highly pneumatised, and its skull is specifically designed for feeding. The dinosaur’s mouth is lined with 500 slender teeth. Nigersaurus would have chewed food with 500 teeth in each row, and its jaws were rotated transversely relative to the rest of the skull.
The name Nigersaurus Taqueti is coded for “Niger reptile” because it had such large teeth. The dinosaur was discovered by Philippe Taquet in 1976, and its skull was very thin, almost translucent. Today, you can visit an exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois, to learn more about this palaeontological find. Its teeth are still a cause for internet memes and jokes, but there are plenty of facts to learn about this dinosaur.
The jaws of the Nigersaurus Taqueti were unique. They were wide, and contained four more fenestrae than other sauropods. The teeth were not prognathous, but were made of bone, which likely had keratinous coating. The skull also incorporated a depression in the cerebral section. The teeth were largely not prognathous.
Diplodocoid rebbachisaurid
The rebbachisaurid is a small dinosaur with approximately 500 teeth. Its name came from the Niger River, and it is a member of the subfamily Rebbachisauridae. It is also associated with the demandasaurus. It is difficult to determine its exact age. Researchers say it lived in the Late Cretaceous period.
This dinosaur had armor plates on its back and a short neck. Its vertebrae were pierced with pneumatic apertures. The tail was long and powerful, and its forelimbs were about two-thirds the length of its hind limbs. Touquet classified it as a dicraeosaurid, a type of diplodocoid.
The bones in the neck and thorax are also relatively light. The bones connecting the snout to the back of the skull are only about 0.16 sq in. These bones protect the skeleton from crushing and teeth shearing. The rebbachisaurid’s femur was about 1 m long and it had thirteen cervical vertebrae. The entire skeleton weighed about 4 tons.
Hadrosaurid
Hadrosaurids were small dinosaurs, and the jaw of this type was long and narrow, lacking a coronoid process. Several neurovascular foramina occupy the lateral surface of the dentary. At the level of the seventh dentary tooth, the anterior portion of the dentary curved at a near right angle. These jaws may have been adapted to chew and spit.
The name hadrosaurid, originally a portmanteau of the words Haddonfield and dinosaur, was later scientifically justified as the Greek word for large and lizard. This was a play on Leidy’s name, which means “Foulke’s big lizard.”
Hadrosaurs had hundreds of teeth. While their large frontal beak could snap off twigs and leaves, their back teeth were made of hundreds or thousands of tiny teeth. They may have used these teeth to grind vegetation, as their back teeth were suited for grinding. Some paleontologists believe that the number of teeth attributed to the success of the hadrosaurids in the Cretaceous is based on the fact that sauropods rely on gastroliths. However, some scientists doubt this theory.
Stegosaurus
Did you know that the Stegosaurus had up to 500 teeth? This colossal, long-necked monster ate plants and probably had a complex bite. Despite this, the dinosaur was also intelligent and probably had more than 500 teeth. In fact, the most powerful dinosaur ever was the Brontosaurus, which had a jaw with over 598 teeth! This jaw’s strength is what made it so powerful!
There are a few dinosaurs with 500 teeth, but this one stands out for two reasons. The first is that the teeth were very sharp, and the second is that it was a herbivore, allowing it to chew plants. The Stegosaurus was a large predator, and its two rows of teeth were designed to attack other dinosaurs and large animals. While the T-Rex had a very short jaw with only six rows of teeth, the Stegosaurus had more than five hundred!
