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'Chicken From Hell' Unearthed In American Midwest
sciencehabit writes "A newly described dinosaur might look like a chicken, but don't be fooled: It was nearly 4 meters long, weighed about 250 kilograms, and lived 66 million years ago in what is today the Hell Creek rock formation in North and South Dakota. That's why its discoverers are calling it the 'chicken from hell,' and indeed it was related to early birds and to feathered, birdlike dinos that brooded over their nests, such as Oviraptor. The creature had a toothless beak, sharp claws, and a tall crest on top of its head. It is the largest Oviraptor-like dinosaur found in North America."
Jesus rode it...
... to the obligatory Far Side Eggs and baby cartoon.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Nice try. I know math late at night might be hard.
4 meters = ~13 feet
250Kg = ~550 lbs. = ~1/4 ton
Must be a hunter or fisherman. "You should have seen the one that got away..."
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
For those that are metric-challenged: http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Karma: Bad
they probably found the remains of Ultra Mega Chicken who was infact raised from the dead.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I keep a few chickens. Little cute bantam chickens, fairly tame too. Currently 8, which is about the most I've ever had.
Observing these critters is quite interesting. For one, teaching them new things (e.g. drinking from chicken nipples, or walking up a plank to their roost when they are yet too small to fly up) is fairly easy and requires maybe one or two times of showing one, the rest soon follow. They may not be Einsteins, but they sure have more intelligence than often attributed to them.
The other thing is that they eat almost anything. I would occasionally see them running around with a mouse or frog that they caught, which would get eaten eventually. (Remember these are quite small birds, about half the size of what one normally thinks of as chicken size.) Observing that, I've often been glad that they aren't bigger. The neighbor's Rottweiler, on the other side of the 8' fence, wouldn't be safe either. Chicken from hell, indeed.
If we can breed chickens and get them to shorten their hatch-to-slaughter time down to 21 days ( and getting shorter ), we should try resurrect this beast and start breeding them.
One of these weight 250KG, or equivalent of almost 150 chickens.
It would solve the world hunger problem in no time !
I believe you about the chickens. Cocks - wait for all the 14 year olds to stop sniggering - can be quite vicious to each other. Now scale it up 10 times and you have a Cassowary - the most dangerous bird on the planet which has killed a number of people. There is a youtube video (too lazy to look for it) of a pair of them stalking some keepers in a zoo - quite frightening. Now take them and increase their size another 3 times and you have this dinosaur. I for one would not want to go anywhere near it.
Wasn't it recently figured that most dinosaurs in fact had feathers? Or is this some secluded sect paleontology? In which case I can think of a number of favored dinosaurs that fit the bill of "chicken from hell" a lot better.
All dinosaurs started off as birds (there's still a lot of debate about this (die hards)), and evolved to what they were, this would be a stage in between. But I don't see any use for the feathers on it's arm unless they unfurled to make a bigger impression.
Ok I was wrong, just this weekend it was questioned so I spoke to my phone what came first the bird or dinosaur, and it came back the bird.
Well: "the idea that birds are derived dinosaurs, first championed by Huxley and later by Nopcsa and Ostrom, enjoys near-unanimous support among today's paleontologists." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...
The lesson learned, don't trust your phone for decent info.
I don't see any use for the feathers on it's arm unless they unfurled to make a bigger impression.
Air braking, manoeuvrability & stabilization would be good uses. e.g. an ostrich can zig zag while running by sticking out its wings which might be useful if it's being chased by a predator or trying to catch prey.
A 13 foot long, quarter ton chicken would NOT be the kind of animal I'd want to get angry. Or be anywhere near when it's hungry. Even though this article says they were "ecological generalists that fed upon vegetation, small animals, and perhaps eggs." I wouldn't want to be the one to test whether this bird/dinosaur would decide to add people to its diet.
For a sufficiently large bird, people are small animals!