9th
grade, DuSable Leadership Academy
ON ASSIGNMENT:
It’s all about Nigersaurus
Nigersaurus taqueti is named in honor of French paleontologist, Philippe Taquet. Nigersaurus is 110 million years old and it is a sauropod. It was found in Gadoufaoua in the Sahara of Niger, Africa. This dinosaur is unique from any other dinosaur. It has a jaw that’s packed with more than 500 tiny teeth. Each tooth was worn down and replaced with another one once a month!
Nigersaurus ate like a cow—that is what makes it unique. It weighed as much as an elephant, but it spent most of day with its face to the ground, mowing down patches of ferns and other plants. Nigersaurus belongs to a group of dinosaurs called diplodocoids. Scientists used to believe that this group of dinosaurs ate leaves and kept their heads at the top of trees like a giraffe, but Nigersaurus has changed their minds about that. Nigersaurus’ fossils were so fragile and thin that if you shine a light on them the light would go right through. |
Photo E. Schroeter |
Nigersaurus is so unique, there is no other dinosaur like it
With a stuffed animal, Arieshae demonstrates where cameras are placed
on animals to create footage for National Geographic’s CritterCam exhibition.
Photo K. Atman
REFLECTIONS OF A DELEGATE
11/12/07
What are your goals for yourself during this unveiling?
My goals are to learn about Nigersaurus and to come back and tell my friends about it. My goals are also to have fun, see things that I have never seen before, and learn things I never learned before. And I hope to make new friends and we will all have fun together.
11/14/07
I told my friend that I was going to the unveiling of a new dinosaur species and she asked, “Why should I care?” What should I tell her?
I would tell my friend she should care because this dinosaur is unique from all the other ones. This dinosaur may have walked the earth when Pangaea started to break apart. You should care because it lived before our era.
You never know. And I can go on, and on, and on, but Nigersaurus is cool and unique and it might be the only one of its species. I also would say because this is something new and no one knows about it but me and you.
Arieshae reads up on Nigersaurus at the
Nigersaurus Delegation pre-trip training.
Photo M. E. Perez
11/15/07
The most valuable thing from this experience that I will take with me back to Chicago is…
The most valuable part of this experience was going to National Geographic headquarters to a press conference to see Nigersaurus revealed. We learned so much about it, and to see Paul Sereno speak about it on camera was awesome; also, being interviewed, because I was so scared and I was glad Tommie was right there on one side and Kristin on my other. I also learned something that is very cool, and now I can go back and tell my family and friends about it.
Arieshae (second from right) and Tommie stand with the reporters
that just interviewed them for TV.
Photo K. Atman
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