Waddling into history: huge ancient
penguin inhabited New Zealand
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[December 16, 2017]
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists have
unearthed in New Zealand fossil bones of what might be the heavyweight
champion of the penguin world, a bird nearly 6 feet tall (1.77 meters)
that thrived 55 to 60 million years ago, relatively soon after the
demise of the dinosaurs.
Researchers said on Tuesday the ancient penguin, called Kumimanu biceae,
weighed nearly 225 pounds (101 kg), and was much bigger than the largest
of these flightless seabirds alive today, the emperor penguin, which
grows to about 4-1/4 feet (1.2 meters) and about 90 pounds (40 kg).
The only ancient penguin yet discovered that might have been larger than
Kumimanu is known only from a leg bone, said ornithologist Gerald Mayr
of the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum
Frankfurt.
"Gigantism in penguins evolved more than once," Mayr said.
Kumimanu, named after a creature from Maori folklore and the Maori word
for bird, is the second-oldest known penguin. The older one, also from
New Zealand, was 61 million years old.
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Kumimanu's partial skeleton lacks the skull. Mayr said other fossils
indicate that the earliest penguins possessed much longer beaks than
their modern relatives, useful for spearing fish.
"It would have been very impressive: as tall as many people, and a very
solid, muscly animal built to withstand frequent deep dives to catch its
prey," said Alan Tennyson, vertebrate curator at the Museum of New
Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, another of the researchers in the study
published in the journal Nature Communications.
"It would not have been the kind of bird that someone could catch alive.
It would have been considerably more powerful than a person."
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![](../images/121617pics/news_I11.jpg)
Kumimanu biceae, an ancient penguin, which lived 55 to 60 million
years ago, weighing 225 pounds (101 kg) and measuring nearly 6 feet
(1.77 m) is pictured in comparison to a human diver in this handout
artist's reconstruction. G. Mayr/Senckenberg Research
Institute/Handout via REUTERS
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Kumimanu and other early penguins had already developed typical
penguin features including flipper-like wings and an upright stance.
Studies suggest early penguins were brownish, not the trademark
black and white of today's penguins, Mayr said.
Penguins are thought to have evolved from a flying ancestor perhaps
resembling a cormorant, Mayr said. The asteroid that doomed the
dinosaurs 66 million years ago also eliminated the large marine
reptiles that dominated the seas, clearing the way for fish-eating
divers like penguins.
Kumimanu lived long before Antarctica's glaciation. At the time, New
Zealand and Antarctica were subtropical.
"It's a common myth that penguins only live in very cold
environments such as the Antarctic region," Tennyson said. "Today,
Galapagos penguins live at the equator, and many fossils show that
early forms of penguins lived in warm seas."
(Reporting by Will DunhamEditing by Sandra Maler)
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