Anzu wyliei is being called the "chicken from Hell," but does the newly-recognized species deserve the name?
Paleontologists have spend the last couple of decades piecing together the relationships between dinosaurs and birds. In the 1970's, dinosaurs were thought of as terrible lizards, slow in body and mind. Since that time, researchers have discovered many common traits between those long-gone species and modern birds.
At the end of the age of the dinosaurs, a great portion of those creatures began a ten-million year population decline. Many species were wiped out but one of the exceptions was Anzu wyliei, which was thriving when most life on Earth perished after a strike from an asteroid the size of Mount Everest.
Anzu wyliei roamed North and South Dakota, along with surrounding areas, 67 million years ago. Body features of this animal comprised a strange composite of birds and lizards features. From head to tail, wyliei stretched 11 feet, and they stood five feet tall. The species had long, muscular legs, with feet tipped with razor-sharp claws. Investigators believe the animal weighed between 440 and 660 pounds when fully grown. Based on sediment found alongside the fossils, the animal likely lived in river flood plain areas.
"[T]his thing is just about as close as you can be to a bird without being a bird yourself. You can see the shared evolutionary heritage with birds all over the skeleton," David Evans of the Royal Ontario Museum told the press.
Like birds, Anzu wyliei had hollow bones. This low-weight system provided the species with greatly agility than it would otherwise possess. A distinctive beak, devoid of teeth, was a hallmark feature of the face of wyliei. The top of the head was adorned by a bony crest. Relatives of Anzu wyliei discovered in China were covered in feathers, and researchers believe this species also possessed these bird-like features. Investigators believe these animals even lived in nests.
However, they also had oversized claws in the place of talons. Instead of sporting a short, side tail useful for controlling flight, the tail of wyliei was long and bony.
This odd hybrid species also possessed large hands, unlike nearly anything in the avian world today.
Anzu Wyliei "were probably ecological generalists that fed upon vegetation, small animals, and perhaps eggs," researchers wrote in the article announcing their results.
Study of wyliei was conducted on a nearly-complete Anzu wyliei skeleton was compiled from three partial fossilized skeletons discovered in the Dakotas and Wyoming.
These creatures belong to a group of animals called maniraptors, which also included species that gave rise to modern birds. Wyliei, however, was not a direct ancestor to modern avian species.
Investigation of Anzu wyliei was detailed in the online journal PloS One.
