chrisbb

Over 110 million years ago, a plant-eating dinosaur walked the earth with a mouth designed to vacuum up food, the National Geographic Society revealed Thursday morning in Washington, D.C.


CBC News

The Nigersaurus skeleton
(Gabrielle Lyon, courtesy Project Exploration)
Discoverer Paul Sereno, a National Geographic explorer-in-residence and paleontologist at the University of Chicago, has named the elephant-sized dinosaur Nigersauras taqueti, after the discovery site, the African country of Niger, and French paleontologist Philippe Taquet.

Evidence of the nine-metre-long, four-tonne Nigersaurus was first found in the 1950s by French paleontologists, but the species was not named at the time.

Sereno named the dinosaur in 1999, after finding a few bones in the Sahara. A team member spotted skull bones in 1997, and over the next few expeditions, researchers were able to collect about 80 per cent of the skeleton, allowing them to reconstruct the Nigersaurus. Key details of the dinosaur's anatomy and lifestyle were not known until recently, however.

The dinosaur's mouth is shaped like the intake slot of a vacuum and paired with more than 50 columns consisting of hundreds of tiny, needle-sharp teeth to grind up its food. A second set of up to eight teeth was lined up behind each tooth as replacements when one broke off. A press release described the teeth as "forming, in effect, a foot-long pair of scissors."

Its feather-light, translucent skull was held close to the ground for grazing, like a cow, researchers found.

"Barely able to lift its head above its back, Nigersaurus operated more like a Mesozoic cow than a reptilian giraffe, mowing down mouthfuls of greenery that consisted largely of ferns and horsetails," explained a National Geographic news release.

Details of the dinosaur's anatomy and lifestyle will be published in the Nov. 21 issue of the scientific journal PLoS ONE and the December issue of National Geographic magazine.


http://technology.sympatico.msn.cbc....ucuum-dinosaur

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'Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as "internationalists" and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.’ - David Rockefeller, 'Memoirs', Random House, New York, 2002, page 405

Free Parking

Shouldn't "crazy" be the word with quotes?

jdanton

INteresting.

We had a dog once who didn't chew. Just sucked the food right off the plate and down his throat.

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Author: Memoirs of a Sleepless Mind, a book you CAN judge by its cover.

chrisbb

i thought about it, but couldnt decide

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'Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as "internationalists" and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.’ - David Rockefeller, 'Memoirs', Random House, New York, 2002, page 405

AlineaHeart

The largest hoover ever!

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