Nigersaurus is a genus of rebbachisaurid sauropod dinosaur that lived throughout what is now africa during the middle Cretaceous period some 115 to 105 million years ago. Remains thought to belong to Nigersaurus were first discovered during a 1965–1972 expedition to the Republic of Niger led by French paleontologist Philippe Taquet, and first mentioned in a paper published in 1976. Although a common genus, the dinosaur had been poorly known until more material of other individuals was discovered during expeditions led by American palaeontologist Paul Sereno in 1997 and 2000. As such Nigersaurus was named and described in more formerly named and described in detail in 1999 by Sereno and his colleagues, The genus name Nigersaurus means Niger reptile in reference to the country where it was discovered, and the specific name taqueti honours Taquet, who was the first to organize large-scale palaeontological expeditions to Niger. The limited understanding of the genus was the result of poor preservation of its remains, which arises from the delicate and highly pneumatic construction of the animals skeleton. Reaching around 30ft (9m) in length and 4,000 to 9,000lbs (1,800 to 4,100kgs) in weight, Nigersaurus was surprisingly small for a sauropod being comparable to a modern elephant. It was a quadrupedal animal with a small head, short neck, thick hind legs, and a prominent tail. Its skull was very specialized 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 giving the animal a beak like structure. In life Nigersaurus was probably a browser, traveling the plains, wetlands, and riverine forest in herds as they feed upon ferns, horsetails, and angiosperms.
