( CNN ) -- For a Tyrannosaurus rex looking for a snack , nothing might have tasted quite like the `` chicken from hell . '' That 's one way Matt Lamanna describes Anzu wyliei , the species of dinosaur that he and fellow paleontologists unveiled Wednesday . It 's not the only way , though . Feathered demon also works , which is why Anzu -- derived from Sumerian mythology -- was chosen as a name . Or you could characterize it , as Lamanna also told CNN , as a 600-pound cross between an ostrich and a velociraptor . And it 's `` pretty damn close '' to looking like the 6-foot-tall turkey a child famously referred to in the movie `` Jurassic Park , '' except a lot stranger and meaner looking . `` You might think this was a really , really weird-looking bird , '' Lamanna said . `` ... But , in fact , this was a very bird-like dinosaur ... with a really long bony tail , very large hands and really sharp claws . '' Lamanna , from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh , detailed the finding Wednesday with fellow scientists from the University of Utah , the Smithsonian Institution in the scientific journal PLOS One . This study came about not from one excavation but from three dating to Cretaceous period and from a rock formation known as Hell Creek in North and South Dakota . The `` chicken from hell '' moniker aside , what makes Anzu wylie especially exciting to paleontologists is that it 's the largest species of egg-stealing oviraptors yet found in North America , said Emma Schachner , an evolutionary biologist at the University of Utah . It 's also `` the first largely complete skeleton I think anyone has found of these guys , '' she said . Lamanna 's predecessor at Carnegie -- Hans-Dieter Sues , now with the Smithsonian -- had acquired two fossils that were dug up in the late 1990s in South Dakota by commercial fossil hunters . Lamanna said that he and Sues decided to work together to figure out what they had . Their breakthrough came at a 2005 conference in Canada , where it became `` abundantly clear '' that a presentation from Schachner and colleague Tyler Lyson detailed the same species . Collectively , they pieced together 75 % to 80 % of the skeleton , which is a very large percentage in paleontology circles , according to Lamanna . Rather than race to publish their finding first , the four scientists teamed up and by doing so , `` learned more ... than we would all have learned independently , '' said Lamanna . What they learned was that the 11Â½-foot-long , roughly 10-foot-tall Anzu wyliei had a bird-like beak and apparent feathers , with a large crest atop its skull and less of a tail than a T. rex . It munched on vegetation , small animals and perhaps eggs . A replication of its skeleton is on display inside Pittsburgh 's Carnegie Museum . That 's a very different environment from the lush , warm , humid , almost bayou-like conditions that it enjoyed roughly 66 million years ago in what 's now a very different North and South Dakota . Not that it was an easy life . Schachner noted that one specimen appeared to have a broken rib , while another had a busted toe . And those injuries are nothing compared with Anzu wyliei 's likely efforts dodging the so-called King of the Dinosaurs . `` It probably spent a lot of its life , '' Lamanna pointed out , `` on the lookout for T . rex . '' Itsy bitsy dinosaur had a famously big cousin . Biggest predator ever to stalk Europe : 4-inch teeth and 33 feet long . Check out a mutant blend of a triceratops and a giant parrot .
Anzu wyliei lived near the end of the dinosaur era alongside T. rex . It looked like a cross between an ostrich and velociraptor , an expert says . Remains of three animals were used to piece together its skeleton .