The floodplains in the Elrhaz formation are home to a wide variety of bizarre fauna, from the colourful Ouranosaurus to our focus of today, the strange grazer known as Nigersaurus taqueti!
Nigersaurus is one of the smallest sauropods commonly featured in parks. Standing at around 10 meters long, and weighing approximately 4 tons, it is not only one of the smallest sauropods on display, but one of the smallest sauropods known to science. This small size in comparison to other sauropods has made Nigersaurus one of the most accessible members of its group for small parks and appears almost everywhere. It is even present in parks which exhibit far larger Sauropods such as Camarasaurus or Mamenchisaurus, due to its somewhat strange appearance.
In terms of actual appearance, Nigersaurus is as plain as the majority of its group. Sporting a green coat for the majority of its scaled body, Nigersaurus actually features a fairly wide variety of patterning breaking up its flanks and neck, primarily made up of darker green blotches and strips of lighter scales. The tail of Nigersaurus is the only place where full patterning comes into play, with the first half of the tail featuring prominent light stripes outlined with black scales, before fading to an olive-green colour.
As a sauropod, Nigersaurus is a group animal by nature. Nigersaurus enjoys living in small mixed herds of male and females, at a roughly even ratio. While a standard sauropod in many regards, from its method of mating display, right down to their cathemeral sleeping habits, Nigersaurus has a few key differences to the other animals in its group. The first of these is that unlike the majority of other sauropods, Nigersaurus actively cares for its young, with herds often featuring up to six young individuals by the end of breeding season. This leads to another secondary trait of Nigersaurus, false-egg laying. While on the surface it would appear Nigersaurus lays the same amount of eggs as most other sauropods, in actuality the vast majority of these eggs are infertile and designed to be used as decoys to protect the three or four fertile eggs per clutch that are present.
Thank you all for reading, expect more from us soon.
~Jagged Fang Designs~
Nice article!
Like new dino-addition. :)
Vacuum Boy.
I love this dinosaur! My favorite small sauropod