What Dinosaur Has 500 Teeth? Meet Nigersaurus
One of the internet's favorite dinosaur questions has a real, remarkable answer. The dinosaur with 500 teeth is Nigersaurus taqueti — and it's far more interesting than the meme that made it famous.
The basics
- Name: Nigersaurus taqueti, "Niger's lizard", honoring paleontologist Philippe Taquet
- Where: the Sahara, in what is now the Republic of Niger (Elrhaz Formation)
- When: the middle Cretaceous, roughly 115–105 million years ago
- Size: about 9 meters (30 feet) long — small for a sauropod
- Diet: plants, cropped at ground level like a prehistoric lawnmower
Why 500 teeth?
Nigersaurus's wide, straight-edged muzzle packed more than 500 slender teeth arranged in rows called dental batteries — around 60 columns in the upper jaw and 68 below, each column stacking replacements behind the working tooth. Teeth wore out fast against gritty ground plants and were swapped roughly every two weeks, conveyor-belt style. Few animals ever recycled teeth faster.
A skull built of air
Its skull bones were so thin that light passes through parts of them, yet the mouth worked like a precision tool. American paleontologist Paul Sereno's expeditions assembled the best skeletons in the late 1990s and 2000s, and the species was formally described in 1999 — one of the first dinosaurs to have its skull digitally reconstructed from CT scans.
From fossil to meme
The "don't google what dinosaur has 500 teeth" meme made Nigersaurus a search-engine celebrity. The joke aside, the animal deserves the fame: a dinosaur that evolved a 500-tooth vacuum-cleaner face is better than anything the internet invented. For more Google-flavored dino lore, meet Stan, the T-Rex at Google HQ, or see dinosaurs in your room with Google's 3D dinosaur feature.
And since you're here: our dinosaur runner stars a T-Rex with a modest tooth count, and Dino Egg Catcher celebrates the herbivore lifestyle — eggs, not teeth.