Anzu wyliei is the "chicken from Hell," but this creature could have easily eaten humans. New finds from the dinosaur may reveal details about how the terrible lizards went extinct.
This feathered dinosaur lived at the end of the reign of the reptiles. Including its tail, this creature stretched 11 feet long, weighed 500 pounds, and had thin, muscular limbs, perfect for tearing into prey with razor-sharp claws. This chicken from Hell roamed the areas that now make up the states of Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas.
Fossils of the species recovered so far consist of partial skeletons from three individuals. Together, the remains make up nearly one entire body.
Anzu wyliei is a member of a group of feathered dinosaurs called Oviraptorosauria. This group of dinosaurs has been classified by paleontologists for almost 100 years. Study of the group has been based on skeletons found in Asia as well as some fragments from North America.
Anzu wyliei was found in the Hell Creek Formation, near the borders between the four states. This area, full of clays, sandstones and mudstones, was once a swampy forest. Now, the area is rich with fossils from the late Cretaceous era, the last era of the dinosaurs.
The three dinosaur fossils were known for a while, but never recognized as a new species until now. Lead author of an article accompanying the finding was Matthew Lamanna of the Carnegie Museum. Co-authors include Hans-Dieter Sues and Tyler Larson from the Smithsonian Institution, Emma Schachner from the University of Utah.
Chicken from Hell may not be a fitting term for the animal, however. As far as researchers can tell, the animal did not hunt big game.
"Anzu and other caenagnathids may have favored well-watered floodplain settings over channel margins, and were probably ecological generalists that fed upon vegetation, small animals, and perhaps eggs," researchers wrote in the accompanying article.
The Carnegie Museum of Natural History owned two of the fossils, which were found just 50 feet apart from one another in South Dakota. Tyler Lyson first spotted the third dinosaur in North Dakota when he was a teenager. He is now a post-doctorate researcher at the National History Museum, and co-author of the paper.
Paleontologists working on the two finds read papers released by the other team. Each group became convinced their dinosaurs might be related. The two teams met at a conference of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in 2006. They soon realized they were working on the same animal, and they spent years constructing a nearly-complete skeleton.
Some researchers point out the extinction of the dinosaurs was well-underway before 65 million years ago. For these feathered reptiles, however, they appeared to be thriving until the day the asteroid hit.
Recreation of the skeleton of Anzu wyliei is detailed in the online journal Plos One.
