What it is
• Scientists unveiled the 30-foot-long Nigersaurus on Thursday , a dinosaur with a feather-light skull held close to the ground to graze like an ancient cow.
•Paul Sereno, National Geographic explorer-in-residence and paleontologist at the University of Chicago, described it as a younger cousin of the North American dinosaur Diplodocus.
•Sereno and colleagues recovered and assembled and named the creature — Nigersaurus taqueti — that he said seems to break all the rules, yet still existed.
• The first bones of Nigersaurus were picked up in Niger in the 1950s by French paleontologists led by Philippe Taquet, but the species was not named at that time. Sereno and his team honored this early work by naming Nigersaurus taqueti after the nation where it was found and the French scientist.
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• Remains of the creature went on display at the headquarters of the National Geographic Society, where they will remain until March.
On the Net
• PLoS One paper: http://www.plosone.org/doi/ pone.0001230
• National Geographic: http://www.national geographic.com/dinosaurs
— The Associated Press