Dinosaurs similar to cows

An initiative by Paul C. Sereno 10 years back has yielded results with the finding of a dinosaur with the structure similar to that of a cow.

The researchers said that the dinosaur, Nigersaurus taqueti, had short neck, delicate bones and a head posture pointed directly towards the ground which is very similar to that of the modern cow.

The bones of this dinosaur were found in Sahara Desert in Africa by a team of French Palentiologists. Later Paul C. Sereno from University of Chicago started the work on assembling them to form a complete skeleton.

Now an article is being published stating that the anatomy of the dinosaur is that of a plant eater. Even the behavior of food searching was found to be similar.

“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 research was co-funded by National Geographic Society. The results will be published in PloS ONE, the online journal of the Public Library of Science and the December issue of National Geographic Society’s magazine.

The studies show that when the 30 feet long dinosaur lived the forests were lush green with large amounts of water available. Ferns and horsetails were amongst the common ground vegetation which was eaten by the dinosaur which is closely related to the North American dinosaur Diplodocus. It had hundreds of teeth in its broad jaws.

The head structure of the dinosaur was determined by Lawrence M. Witmer of Ohio University by observing the CT scans done on the skull recovered in 1997. Details of the braincase and inner ear helped in knowing animal’s head posture. Neck bones were structured in a way that the animal could not look up.

Muzzle of this animal was also different from other plant eating dinosaurs with around 50 columns of teeth, all lined up along the jaws’ front edges, forming, foot-long scissors. It was angled towards the ground unlike forward pointing nose and mouth in other dinosaurs.

CT scans show that there were around nine replacement teeth in the jaw of the Niger. As soon as one wore out, the others took it place. “Among dinosaurs,” Dr. Sereno said, “Nigersaurus sets the Guinness record for tooth replacement.” Almost period of the growth of tooth replacement is supposed to be 1 in a month.