Scientists discovered a new species of dinosaur that looks like a cross between a bird and a reptile.
“It would look like a really absurd, stretched-out chicken,” one of the paleontologists who discovered the species, Emma Schachner of the University of Utah, told the Washington Post on Wednesday.
The newly discovered species, Anzu wyliei, is part of the oviraptorosaur group of dinosaurs, but has been unofficially dubbed the “Chicken from Hell.”
Scientists found fossil specimens of the new species in in a sedimentary rock layer called the Hell Creek Formation in North and South Dakota, which helped inspire the nickname.
The four scientists who helped discover the new species published a paper on the “Chicken from Hell” in the PLOS Journal on Wednesday.
The dinosaur was five feet tall and eleven feet long, with a very long tail and feathers on the arms, according to the Smithsonian. It lived at the end of the Cretaceous period — from about 68 million to 66 million years ago.
“This group of dinosaurs looks really bizarre even by dinosaurian standards,” Hans-Dieter Sues, one of the paleontologists who wrote the paper on the new species, told the Washington Post.
