Museum PR Announcements News and Information

Smithsonian Museums Reveal New Species of Large, Feathered Dinosaur

A team of scientists from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the University of Utah has described an unusual bird-like dinosaur previously unknown to science, resembling a cross between a modern emu and a reptile. The new species, Anzu wyliei, lived 68 to 66 million years ago and was identified from three partial skeletons collected from the Upper Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation in North and South Dakota. The species belongs to Oviraptorosauria, a group of dinosaurs mostly known from fossils found in Central and East Asia. The fossils of Anzu provide, for the first time, a detailed picture of the anatomy, biology and evolutionary relationships of North American oviraptorosaurs. A detailed report about the team’s research is published by PLOS ONE March 19.