After purchasing fossils online for a class project, a graduate student discovers a dinosaur he’s never seen before.
Dubbed “Pharaoh’s Dawn Chicken from Hell,” this beaked beast roamed the earth at the end of the century. Cretaceous period They are from the South Dakota section of the Hell Creek Formation (about 65.5 million years ago), according to a new study published Jan. 24 in the journal Nature. Pro Swan.
Lead author of the study Kyle Atkins WeltmanThe Oklahoma State University doctoral student told Live Science that when he couldn’t find the bones he needed to complete one of his first research projects in 2020, he bought four fossils for $5,000. Told.
The fossilized hind limbs were thought to belong to a cassowary-like dinosaur, but Anne’s Wileynickname is “”hell’s chicken” But when Atkins-Weltman scanned the fossils, he discovered they belonged to an unidentified species.
“I felt my heart pounding,” he said. “Is this really happening to me so early in my career?”
Related: Dinosaur finger bones unearthed from rock shelter in Lesotho suggest Africans were discovering fossils centuries before the British did.
After careful consideration, Atkins Weltman decided that “Eoneophron Infernalis“As the name of a new species. Eonephron It is a combination of the Greek word “eos” meaning “dawn” (indicating the species’ ancient origin) and “neophron”, the genus name for the Egyptian vulture, also known as “Pharaoh’s chicken”. . The reference to the pharaoh’s chicken is that Atkins-Weltman gave the chicken’s nickname ” A. Wiley At the same time, he paid tribute to his pet Nile monitor lizard, Pharaoh, who recently passed away.
“He was an important part of my life,” said Atkins-Weltman, who has autism. “He was an emotional support animal and helped me get through the hardest parts of being a scientist and dealing with all the stress and everything that comes with it.”
The species name is “infernaris“” comes from the Latin word “hell,” which is reminiscent of the Hell Creek Formation. A. Wiley See “Hell’s Chicken.”
E. infernalis is a close relative of A. Wiley Both are oviraptorosaurs belonging to the Caenagnadae family and characterized by long, slender limbs and toothless beaks. A. Wiley They weighed approximately 440 to 660 pounds (200 to 300 kilograms); E. infernalis It weighed approximately 170 pounds (78 kg).
Size isn’t the only thing that distinguishes the two dinosaurs. The astragalus and calcaneus ankle bones are fused in both hell chickens, but they are also fused with the hell chicken’s tibia. E. infernaris. The study authors speculate that the extra fusion may have helped the new species better cope with the stress of running.
E. infernalis It will be held at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh after Atkins Weltman donated it to the collection. He is open to purchasing fossils, but added that commercializing fossils is problematic. “Privately stored bones are virtually useless to science unless they can be accessed,” he says.
Studying the bones helped researchers understand the diversity of dinosaurs before the end-Cretaceous catastrophe. Most of them were destroyed by an asteroid impact.. Atkins Weltman pointed out that over the past two million years of this era, dinosaur groups such as tyrannosaurs and lambeosaurs have declined. The decline of dinosaurs before the asteroid was still under discussion.However, the existence of E. infernaris, A. Wileyand evidence of a third, currently undescribed species that lived at the same time, suggests that the decline was not reflected in the Caenagnathidae.
“While other groups suffered, this group seemed to maintain stability and diversity,” he said. “My guess is that they were omnivorous and very versatile, switching food sources to survive,” he said.