Scientists have discovered a freakish, birdlike species of dinosaur — 11 feet long, 500 pounds, with a beak, no teeth, a bony crest atop its head, murderous claws, prize-fighter arms, spindly legs, a thin tail and feathers sprouting all over the place. Officially, it’s a member of a group of dinosaurs called oviraptorosaurs.
Unofficially, it’s the Chicken From Hell.
...That’s the nickname the scientists have been using. It’s the term in the news release associated with the discovery. This dino-bird is not literally a chicken, or even a bird. It’s definitely a dinosaur, and it lived at the end of the Cretaceous period, from about 68 million to 66 million years ago.
“It would look like a really absurd, stretched-out chicken,” said paleontologist Emma Schachner of the University of Utah, one of the scientists describing the new species.
...The fossils of three specimens of the new dinosaur were found in a sedimentary rock layer known as the Hell Creek Formation in three locations in North and South Dakota. The formation, the scientists said, helped inspire the nickname.
...It’s a big animal, the biggest oviraptorosaur species found in North America. The creature brings to mind a huge flightless bird, such as an ostrich or emu. The weird crest on its head, which resembles half a dinner plate turned vertically, looks like that of a cassowary. The new dinosaur is loaded with biological accessories and adaptations, as if evolution had been inspired by a Swiss Army knife.
...But now comes Anzu, adding another genus to the dinosaur bestiary.
Anzu also reminds everyone of the birdiness of dinosaurs, and the dinosaur-ness of birds. Paleontologists can become dyspeptic when they hear that dinosaurs are extinct. Not so: Birds are dinosaurs.
Anzu is from the line of non-avian dinosaurs that went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous. Some of the birdiness of Anzu reflects “convergent” evolution, Lamanna said. Its ancestors had teeth, but it has none, meaning that the beak — a very birdy feature — evolved as an adaptation independently of the beak in the evolutionary line of true birds. That’s true also of the birdy crest on the head.
“It would have had a lot of birdy behaviors,” Lamanna said.
Reminds me of those Australian birds, cassowaries, that have the bony crest, the slashing talons, and an irritable nature. They’re smaller, but they can do a pretty good imitation of the Chicken From Hell:
Reminds me of those Australian birds, cassowaries, that have the bony crest, the slashing talons, and an irritable nature. They’re smaller, but they can do a pretty good imitation of the Chicken From Hell:
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