Meet the chicken from hell dinosaur.
This is the nickname given to a newly discovered dinosaur that lived 66 million years ago. Officially known as “Anzu wyliei,” the 11-foot-long, 500-pound is an oviraptorosaur—a family of two-legged, birdlike dinosaurs. It is among the largest feathered dinosaurs ever found in North America.
It was “as close as you can get to a bird without being a bird,” said study leader Matt Lamanna, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. “You might think this was a really, really weird-looking bird,” Lamanna added. “… But, in fact, this was a very bird-like dinosaur … with a really long bony tail, very large hands and really sharp claws.
The Anzu wyliei was probably an omnivore that ate whatever it wanted, including vegetation and small animals. It could easily run down prey, with its thigh bone sporting bony ridges where large muscles could attach.
Fossils of the Anzu wyliei were first excavted from the Hell Creek formation of South and North Dakota several years ago. However, it took years to identify and study all the remains.
Source: NPR