A penguin as heavy as a gorilla. The fact that the recently discovered species is so monstrous on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island has left scientists speechless. The fossil remains found are also extremely old: they belong to 57 million years ago. With about 160 kilosIt is the heaviest penguin known to science.
Alan Tennyson, a paleontologist at the Te Papa Tongarewa Museum in New Zealand, discovered the bones of large seabirds with his son in 2017. three different species hitherto unknown penguins.
The remains were deposited on a beach known for large deposits of the so-called Moeraki rocks, the large boulders that characterize this New Zealand coast. Thanks to the power of the tide, fossilized bone fragments were discovered inside these rocks.. Analyzing them, it turned out that there are three new, hitherto undescribed, penguin species, and one of them is probably larger than any known member of this family of cute flightless birds.
“Fossils give us evidence of the history of life, and sometimes that evidence is really surprising,” explains Daniel Field of Cambridge Earth Sciences. “Many of the first fossil penguins grew to gigantic proportions.easily outshines the largest penguins that exist today.
Details of these prehistoric giant penguins are described in the magazine. Journal of Paleontology. Scientists named the largest penguin kumimanu fordycei. Kumimanu is the Maori word meaning “monster bird” and fordycei is named after Dr. Refers to Ewan Fordyce. The smallest penguin was named: petradipts (“rock diver”) stone house.
“Ewan Fordyce is a legend in our field, but also one of the most generous mentors I’ve ever known. Without Ewan’s field program, we wouldn’t even know so many iconic fossil species exist, so it’s just right that he has his own namesake penguin.”
How was it possible to determine the weight of these giants? By creating three-dimensional models, the researchers calculated the weights of the two newly discovered species based on the size and density of their bones compared to those of modern penguins. This way, P. stone house would weigh about 50 kilograms, slightly more than the weight of emperor penguins (Aptenodites forster) while alive K. fordeycei Up to 160 kg, it would weigh more than three times that figure.
Seems like this unusual size gave them certain advantages in the water.. “Penguins were so large that this made them more efficient in the water. A larger penguin would have been able to catch larger prey and, more importantly, better maintain its body temperature in cold waters,” the authors write.
When the Chicxulub asteroid impact occurred about 66 million years ago, that catastrophe wiped out non-avian dinosaurs, and mammals were still small and terrestrial. But with the disappearance of the giant marine reptiles, a void has been left that has also been filled by penguins, which have grown to impressive size. The absence of large competitors gave the penguins plenty of room to grow. It is still unknown whether there were larger penguins or whether the remains found coincidentally correspond to a particularly giant specimen.
Reference work: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-paleontology/article/largestknown-fossil-penguin-provides-insight-into-the-early-evolution-of-sphenisciform-body-size -and-flipper-anatomy/8D4A78B2CA0A716134F8E60169A633FD
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