A relative of the modern ostrich once strutted across North America.

Scientists have identified the bones of a 50 million-year-old fossil -- recovered a decade ago from an ancient lake bed in Wyoming -- as belonging to a relative of the famed flightless African bird species.

"This is among one of the earliest well-represented bird species after the age of large dinosaurs," researcher Sterling Nesbitt, an assistant professor of geoscience at Virginia Tech, said in a news release.

Scientists named the new species Calciavis grandei. They suggest the ancient ostrich relative looked more like a chicken, mostly walking along the ground, flapping its wings only in short bursts to escape predators.

The lake bed from which the fossil was unearthed is famous for producing immaculately preserved whole fish skeletons, but it has also yielded impressive bird, mammal and reptile fossils.

Two Calciavis grandei fossils have been recovered from the lake, dated between 56 million and 30 million years old.

"The new bird shows us that the bird group that includes the largest flightless birds of today had a much wider distribution and longer evolutionary history in North America," Nesbitt added. "Back when Calciavis was alive, it lived in a tropical environment that was rich with tropical life and this is in stark contrast to the high-desert environment in Wyoming today."

Researchers described the new species in the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History.

First fossil facial tumor found in duck-billed dinosaur
Southampton, England (UPI) Jul 5, 2016 - Scientists have unearthed the first fossilized facial tumor. The ancient facial growth belongs to Telmatosaurus transsylvanicus, one of the earliest hadrosaur species -- a duck-billed dinosaur.

The tumor is an ameloblastoma, a benign type of growth found in the jaws of humans, mammals and reptiles. Neither it nor any other type of facial tumor has ever before been seen among fossilized animals.

"This discovery is the first ever described in the fossil record and the first to be thoroughly documented in a dwarf dinosaur," researcher Kate Acheson, a PhD student at the University of Southampton, said in a news release. "Telmatosaurus is known to be close to the root of the duck-billed dinosaur family tree, and the presence of such a deformity early in their evolution provides us with further evidence that the duck-billed dinosaurs were more prone to tumors than other dinosaurs."

The fossil -- dated between 69 million and 67 million years old -- hails from the Late Cretaceous period. It was discovered in a geopark in western Romania.

Because the fossil remains are incomplete, paleontologists can't be certain how the adolescent hadrosaur met its end. It's possible the dinosaur's facial growth played a role.

"We know from modern examples that predators often attack a member of the herd that looks a little different or is even slightly disabled by a disease," explained researcher Zoltn Csiki-Sava.

"The tumor in this dinosaur had not developed to its full extent at the moment it died, but it could have indirectly contributed to its early demise."

Researchers detailed their discovery in the journal Scientific Reports.