From
io9:
Say hello to Anzu wyliei,
a newly discovered Cretaceous era dinosaur that roamed the Dakotas 66
million years ago. Measuring nearly 12 feet long and weighing over 600
pounds, it's the largest oviraptorosaur ever discovered in North
America.
"We
jokingly call this thing the 'chicken from hell,' and I think that's
pretty appropriate," noted paleontologist Matt Lamanna of the Carnegie
Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh in a statement. His team's
analysis of three partial skeletons, which were uncovered from the
uppermost level of the Hell Creek rock formation in North and South
Dakota,
now appears in PLoS One.
More formally, the feathered dinosaur is named after Anzu, a bird-like demon from Mesopotamian mythology, and wyliei after a boy named Wylie, the dinosaur-loving grandson of a Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh trustee.
Between the three partial skeletons, the paleontologists were practically able to reconstruct the whole thing. Living amongst
Tyrannosaurus rex and
Triceratops,
the newly discovered dinosaur measured 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) long and
almost five feet (1.5 meters) tall at the hip. It weighed an estimated
440 to 660 pounds (200 to 300 kg). Living during the Late Cretaceous, it
was wiped out by an asteroid (or some other mass-extinction-inducing
event) 65 million years ago along with its contemporaries.
As noted,
it's the largest oviraptorosaur ever discovered in North America — a
group of dinosaurs closely related to birds who often exhibited
cassowary-like crests on their heads (a cassowary being a flightless
bird found in New Guinea and Australia). They were probably omnivores,
foraging on vegetation, small animals, and perhaps eggs while living on
wet floodplains.
And if the
fossilized remains are of any indication, these things got into their
fair share of scraps and mishaps. One dinosaur had a broken and healed
rib, while another showed signs trauma to a toe.
.JPG)
