Scientists from Carnegie and Smithsonian museums and the
University of Utah today unveiled the discovery, naming and description of a
sharp-clawed, 500-pound, bird-like dinosaur that roamed the Dakotas with T. rex
66 million years ago and looked like an 11 ½-foot-long “chicken from hell.”
“It was a giant raptor, but with a chicken-like head and
presumably feathers. The animal stood about 10 feet tall, so it would be scary
as well as absurd to encounter,” says University of Utah biology postdoctoral
fellow Emma Schachner, a co-author of a new study of the dinosaur.