US student accidentally discovers new dinosaur species: what 'Chicken from Hell' looks like

A graduate student from the United States purchased $5,000 worth of dinosaur bones for his project from a private dealer. However, after careful analysis, it turned out that these were the remains of a new species of extinct lizard.

Kyle Atkins-Weltman, 28, who is now a doctoral candidate in paleoecology at Oklahoma State University, named the new species "Pharaoh's Dawn Chicken from Hell" (Latin: Eoneophron infernalis) in honor of his deceased pet, the Nile monitor. This "Chicken from Hell" is a smaller cousin of the previously known and also very similar to a poultry dinosaur Anzu wyliei, writes DailyMail.

Kyle Atkins-Weltman acquired the fossils while studying for his master's degree at the University of Kansas, hoping to study the toe bones of the Anzu dinosaur in more detail.

The doctoral candidate thought he had ordered the femur, tibia, and metatarsal bones of Anzu wyliei, a larger member of the same Oviraptorosaur group of dinosaurs as the new species. But something was wrong with the bones.

"They were about 25 percent smaller than other Anzu fossils. I assumed it was an Anzu, until the evidence showed it wasn't," Atkins-Weltman recalls.

The young scientist was assisted by Dr. Holly Woodward-Ballard, an assistant professor of anatomy at Oklahoma State University. She discovered that the distance between the outer rings of the bone pieces in this specimen was too close to be the bones of young Anzu.

The rings in the Atkins-Weltman's fossils bought were so close together that Dr. Woodward believed it had almost reached its peak maturity, so it became obvious that they were looking at a new species of dinosaur.

According to the researchers, the new species, Chicken from Hell, was 90 cm tall at the hip and weighed approximately 50 kg.

"It was a very birdlike dinosaur. It had a toothless beak and relatively short tail. It's hard to tell its diet because of the toothless beak," said Atkins-Weltman.

The young scientist admitted that the discovery came as a big surprise to him. "It took me at least maybe two or three days to really wrap my head around that because it was just so serendipitous," he said.

Atkins-Weltman, a Ph.D. candidate at Oklahoma State University, studies vertebrate anatomy and paleontology and wants to devote his life to it. "My heart skipped a beat because I never expected something like this to fall into my lap. This is what I want to do with the rest of my life," the researcher emphasized.

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