US scientists have announced the discovery of
new dinosaur specie, Anzu wyliei thus having more insight on how dinosaurs became extinct 66 million years ago.
Anzu wyliei is a strange, bird-like creature that has a bony crest on top of a beaky head and a long tail like a lizard.The animal was identified from the partial remains of three skeletons collected in North and South Dakota.
"We had inklings that there
might be such a creature out there, but now with these bones we have 80%
of the skeleton and can really look in detail at the structure of this
animal and make inferences about its biology," says Hans Sues, curator
of vertebrate palaeontology in the department of palaeobiology at the
Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC.
"
Anzu is really bizarre, even by dinosaur standards.The skull has this extraordinarily tall and thin crest with a
snout and a huge beak with sharp edges and a strange sliding jaw
joint," that could be used to cut up vegetation and meat, he says.
Diverse communities
The size of a small car, the dinosaur also had claws and
feathers on its upper arms. It belongs to a group of dinosaurs known as
Oviraptorosauria. Most evidence of their existence comes from fossils
discovered in Central and East Asia.The
Anzu bones are the first detailed evidence that oviraptorosaurs also lived in North America.The specimens were found in a geological formation known as
Hell Creek, which has been extensively explored and is the source of
many dinosaur fossils discovered in North America.Scientists have nicknamed it "the chicken from Hell" because of its appearance and where it was found.
The site is important because it was formed in the last two
million years of the Cretaceous Period, just before dinosaurs were wiped
out by an asteroid strike.
Many researchers have argued that the dinosaurs were already
in decline because of climate change.
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