A graduate student who purchased $5,000 worth of dinosaur bones from a private dealer for school can now claim the rare distinction of discovering a new species.
Kyle Atkins-Weltman, now a doctoral candidate in “paleoecology” at Oklahoma State University, even went so far as to name his find.
He has called it the ‘Pharaoh’s Dawn Chicken of Hell’ (Eoneophron infernalis in Latin).
But this “chicken from hell”, a smaller cousin of the previously known dinosaur and also very similar to a bird, anzu wylieiwhose bones Atkins-Weltman believed he had bought, actually has a much more important story to tell than his own existence.
“Our work,” the doctoral student argued, “demonstrates that dinosaur diversity may not have been declining before the asteroid impact.”
In other words, their new species flies in the face of theories repeatedly put forward by other paleontologists who maintain that dinosaurs were already extinct, weakened by repeated “volcanic winters” before the Chicxulub meteor struck its fatal blow.
Above, an illustration of the new ‘chicken from hell’, a smaller cousin of the previously known and very bird-like dinosaur, ‘Anzu wyliei’. The new species has been named ‘Hell’s Pharaoh’s Dawn Chicken’ (‘Eoneophron infernalis’ in Latin) by the 28-year-old who discovered it.
Kyle Atkins-Weltman, now a doctoral candidate in “paleoecology” at Oklahoma State University, bought $5,000 worth of dinosaur bones from a private dealer for a school project when he was a master’s student in Kansas. Those bones turned out to be a new species of dinosaur.
Working with an associate professor of anatomy at Oklahoma State, Dr. Eric Snively, the younger Atkins-Weltman now believes that even more undiscovered dinosaurs from those late Cretaceous years could be right under researchers’ noses.
“More species from this period are yet to be discovered,” the couple wrote for The conversation“potentially even by reclassifying fossils already in museum collections.”
Their reasoning is based on methods used to confirm that Eoneophron infernalis It’s really a new species: paleohistology, the study of microstructures within fossil bone.
Paleohistology techniques underwent a revolution in the second half of the 20th century, suggesting that the first dinosaur discoveries from about a century ago may still benefit from a second, more modern and granular look.
In the case of the new ‘Pharaoh’s Dawn Hell Chicken’, the truth emerged by taking thin slices of its bones and determining its age like the rings of a tree.
Originally, Atkins-Weltman had purchased the fossils while in a master’s program at the University of Kansas, hoping to study the weight-bearing toe bones, or “metatarsals.” anzú Dinosaur ‘chicken from hell’.
The doctoral candidate thought he had ordered the femur, tibia, and metatarsal bones of the anzú wylieia larger example of the same group of Oviraptorosaur (‘egg-stealing lizard’) dinosaurs as the new species.
But something was wrong with the bones.
“They were about 25 percent smaller than other anzú fossils,” Atkins-Weltman recalled.
‘We thought he was a minor anzú,’ he told the Oklahoma State alumni magazine.
‘I assumed it was a anzúuntil tests showed it wasn’t.
Help from Oklahoma State associate professor of anatomy Dr. Holly Woodward-Ballard revealed that the space between the outer rings of this specimen’s bone slices was too close together to be the bones of a juvenile. anzú.
The ringed layers within the bones of a young animal, as Woodward-Ballard explained to washington mailThey are often far apart, a sign of accelerated youthful growth.
However, the rings within the fossil acquired by Atkins-Weltman were so close together that Dr. Woodward believed they suggested a dinosaur near full maturity.
Or, as she told local KWTV 9 News: “I would say this creature is approaching adult size.”
Discovered in 2014, the 3-metre-tall ‘Anzu wyliei’ creature (pictured above) gets its name from a chicken-like crest on its head, feathered wings, long claws and a dangerous beak.
In 2014, paleontologists at the University of Utah discovered three partial Anzu wyliei skeletons in ancient rocks in North and South Dakota. It was fossils acquired from excavations in this same general area, the Hell Creek Formation, that gave rise to the new species of “hell chicken.”
Atkins-Weltman, Dr. Snively, Dr. Woodward-Ballard and their colleagues published news about the new dinosaur in the journal. PLUS one this January.
The bones had been excavated from the so-called Hell Creek Formation, an area spanning Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming, where many dinosaur fossils are found, including the 10-foot-tall one. anzú wyliei ‘chicken from hell’—had been discovered.
Atkins-Weltman’s new cousin of that ‘chicken from hell’ Eoneophron infernalisIt is less than a third that size: about 3 feet tall at the hip and about the weight of a human, between 150 and 160 pounds.
The 28-year-old PhD student chose the name ‘Hell Pharaoh’s Dawn Chicken’, in honor of both the anzú and his own deceased pet, Pharaoh, a Nile monitor lizard.
‘It was a dinosaur very similar to a bird. It had a toothless beak and a relatively short tail. “It is difficult to distinguish their diet due to the toothless beak,” according to Atkins-Weltman.
“It definitely had feathers,” he added. “It was covered in feathers and had wings.”
The help of Dr. Holly Woodward-Ballard, associate professor of anatomy at Oklahoma State, revealed that the space between the outer rings of the bone slices of the new specimen (above) was too tight to be bone from an ‘Anzu wyliei ‘ youthful, suggesting a new ‘hell’. chicken’
The ringed layers within a young animal’s bones, as Woodward-Ballard explained, are typically widely spaced, a sign of its youthful growth and rapid maturation. Above a thin slice of bone from the new species under a microscope for paleohistological analysis
Atkins-Weltman (above) carefully watches a portion of her new “chicken from hell” dinosaur for camera operators with a local television news crew.
Atkins-Weltman told the Washington Post that the discovery took him by surprise.
“It took me at least two or three days to understand that because it was so serendipitous,” he said. “It didn’t start with a ‘eureka,’ but with a ‘Hmm, that’s strange.'”
Atkins-Weltman, a doctoral candidate at Oklahoma State, is studying vertebrate anatomy and paleontology. According to the school, he is the first of his students to be published in a peer-reviewed journal about the discovery of a new dinosaur.
“My heart skipped a beat because I never expected something like that to fall into my lap,” she confessed. “This is what I want to do with the rest of my life.”
WHAT ARE OVIRAPTORS?
Oviraptors are a genus of small Mongolian theropod dinosaurs.
They were feathered dinosaurs that walked on two legs and had parrot-like beaks and shared another characteristic with modern birds: they incubated clutches of eggs at a temperature similar to that of chickens.
Pictured is a 3D illustration of Caudipteryx, a genus of peacock-sized oviraptorosaur dinosaur. The first specimen of Caudipteryx was discovered in China in 1997.
The first specimen was discovered in 1924 on top of a nest full of eggs, leading paleontologists to assume that the creature was eating them when it died.
But later findings revealed that the eggs actually contained oviraptor hatchlings, meaning the lurking lizard was not a predator but a loving parent guarding its nest.