Skeleton and selected bones of Anzu wyliei. (Image: Carnegie Museum of Natural History)
Anzu wyliei – United States, Late Cretaceous (66 million years ago), described 2014
From the Hell Creek formation of the Dakotas, Anzu has been described by the Smithsonian Institution and Carnegie Museum scientists who found it as the ‘chicken from hell’ and a cross between an emu and a lizard. Only the second feathered dinosaur ever discovered in the Americas, this omnivorous oviraptorosaur is from the very end of the dinosaurs’ reign. Anzu (AHN-zoo) is the name of a bird-like deity from Sumerian mythology, while wyliei honours Wylie J Tuttle, the son of a museum donor.
With its head crest and feathered forelimbs, Anzu wyliei was nicknamed the “chicken from hell” by its discoverers at the Carnegie Museum, Smithsonian Institution and University of Utah. (Image: Mark Klinger/Carnegie Musem)