In 2014, scientists found a new dinosaur species called the “chicken from hell.” It was a bird-like dinosaur with claws, weighing up to 750 pounds and standing over 11 feet tall.
Recently, researchers have found another dinosaur species in the same family as Anzu wyilei, the “chicken from hell.” Until now, Anzu was thought to be the only member of this dinosaur family.
The newly discovered dinosaur, weighing about as much as a human, is called “pharaoh’s dawn chicken from hell,” or Eoneophron infernalis. Its finding, described in a study published in the journal PLOS One, might challenge the idea that dinosaur diversity was already decreasing before they were wiped out by an asteroid at the end of the Cretaceous period.
Despite its fierce name, the lead author of the study explains that he actually bought the fossils online in 2020, thinking they were Anzu remains. He didn’t realize he had a completely new species until later.
“I was shocked,” said Kyle Atkins-Weltman from Oklahoma State University. “I couldn’t believe it was happening to me so early in my career.”
In his article for The Conversation, Atkins-Weltman explains the process that led to the discovery.
Initially, his team noticed that the bones were much smaller than those of Anzu. They thought it might be a young dinosaur, which would have been a big find because no young Anzu fossils had been found before.
But when they examined the fossil further, they found something unexpected. The growth lines on the bones, similar to tree rings that show age, were closer together towards the center.
This indicated that the dinosaur was fully grown and not an Anzu at all.
The researchers now believe there were more caenagnathids in North America than they previously thought. They even suspect there might be a third type of “hell-chicken” out there, which would be the smallest of the group, about the size of a dog. This suspicion is based on a partial foot bone they found.
Finding multiple similar species challenges the idea that caenagnathids and other dinosaurs were dying out before the asteroid hit.
“While there are still many questions about this extinction debate, Eoneophron provides evidence that caenagnathids were thriving before the asteroid changed everything,” Atkins-Weltman wrote in The Conversation.
The drop in diversity might be due to biases in how fossils are formed and identified. We don’t have a complete picture of all the creatures from the dinosaur era. There could be many new species being mistaken for ones we already know about.
