If you have spent any time on social media or Reddit in the last few years, you have probably stumbled across a peculiar warning.
“Don’t Google what dinosaur has 500 teeth.”
Naturally, human psychology works in reverse. Tell someone not to do something, and they immediately do it. If you are here, you probably took the bait. You wanted to know which prehistoric creature was hiding that many chompers.
Well, here is the answer: The dinosaur is the Nigersaurus.
But beyond the memes and the internet jokes, this was actually a real, fascinating animal. It wasn’t a terrifying monster from a horror movie. It was actually a mild-mannered grazer that acted more like a prehistoric lawnmower than a T-Rex.
Let’s dig into the truth about the dinosaur with the most famous smile in history.
Meet the Nigersaurus
The Nigersaurus (pronounced nee-zhair-sore-us) was a rebbachisaurid sauropod dinosaur that lived about 115 to 105 million years ago. This places it smack in the middle of the Cretaceous period.
It roamed a lush, river-rich region in what is now the Republic of Niger in West Africa. This is actually where it gets its name. Nigersaurus taqueti literally translates to “Niger reptile.”
It wasn’t massive compared to its cousins like the Brachiosaurus. It measured about 30 feet long, which is still huge compared to a human, but compact for a long-necked dinosaur.
The Dental Record: 500 Teeth
So, let’s address the main question: what dinosaur has 500 teeth packed into its mouth?
The Nigersaurus had a skull unlike any other dinosaur. While most long-necked dinos had heads shaped like horses or boxes, the Nigersaurus had a wide, flat muzzle.
If you looked at it from the top down, its mouth looked exactly like the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner.
Inside that wide mouth, it packed batteries of teeth. It had over 500 slender teeth arranged in columns.
Here is the baffling part—these teeth weren’t for tearing flesh. They were for sheering plants.
Because it ate close to the ground (grazing on ferns and horsetails), its teeth wore down incredibly fast. But nature had a solution. The Nigersaurus had “spare tires” for teeth. Beneath each active tooth, there were several replacements waiting to pop up.
Scientists estimate that this dinosaur replaced its teeth every 14 days. That is an incredibly fast turnaround compared to other dinosaurs.
Addressing the Viral Joke
If this dinosaur is just a cool, plant-eating African sauropod, why did it become an internet meme?
The “what dinosaur has 500 teeth joke” usually relies on the phonetic sound of the name. When pronounced incorrectly or read quickly by someone unfamiliar with French or African geography, the name Nigersaurus can sound like a racial slur.
This led to a wave of “prank” posts on TikTok and Reddit telling people to Google the name, expecting them to be shocked by the spelling.
However, the name is strictly geographical. It honors the country of Niger, a nation with a rich paleontological history. The specific species name, taqueti, honors French paleontologist Philippe Taquet, who was the first to discover the remains in 1976.
So, while the internet tries to make it awkward, the name is simply a nod to where this amazing creature was found.
The “Mesozoic Cow”
Paleontologists often refer to the Nigersaurus as a “Mesozoic Cow.”
Why? Because of how it held its head.
Most long-necked dinosaurs held their heads high to reach tree tops. The Nigersaurus was different. Computer scans of its inner ear (which controls balance) suggest that its neutral head posture was facing directly down at the ground.
It spent its life looking at its feet, vacuuming up low-lying vegetation.
Its bones were also extremely light. The vertebrae were so thin in places that you could practically see light through them. This made the animal lightweight, which was helpful for moving around the marshy river deltas of ancient Africa.
What Type of Dinosaur Has 500 Teeth? (And Are There Others?)
When people ask what type of dinosaur has 500 teeth, they are almost exclusively looking for the Nigersaurus.
However, having a lot of teeth wasn’t entirely unique in the dinosaur kingdom. Hadrosaurs (duck-billed dinosaurs), for example, had massive dental batteries with hundreds of teeth used for grinding tough plants. The Edmontosaurus could have over 1,000 teeth in its jaw at once!
But the Nigersaurus remains unique because of that straight, vacuum-cleaner row of teeth right at the front of its mouth. It’s a face only a mother (or a paleontologist) could love.
Conclusion
So, the next time someone tries to prank you by asking what dinosaur has 500 teeth, you don’t have to be surprised.
You can tell them it’s the Nigersaurus. You can tell them it lived in West Africa, replaced its teeth every two weeks, and spent its days grazing like a cow with a really long neck.
The internet might have made it famous for a joke, but the science behind this animal is genuinely cool. It’s a reminder that nature produces some truly weird and wonderful designs.
Frequently Asked Questions
Was the Nigersaurus a meat eater? No. Despite having hundreds of teeth, the Nigersaurus was a strict herbivore (plant-eater). Its teeth were designed for cropping soft plants, not for biting other animals.
How do you pronounce Nigersaurus? It is pronounced nee-zhair-sore-us. The “Niger” part sounds like the country (Nee-zhair), not the river (Ny-jer).
Is the dinosaur with 500 teeth still alive? No, the Nigersaurus went extinct over 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous period.
Who discovered the Nigersaurus? The first bones were found in the 1970s, but the animal wasn’t fully described and understood until much later by paleontologist Paul Sereno and his team from the University of Chicago.
