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| Palaeeudyptes klekowskii This prehistoric penguin was tall and weighed 250 pounds. |
in August 2019 that Human-sized penguin fossil discovered in New Zealand !
Human-sized penguin fossil discovered in New Zealand
Source: The UK Guardian Newspaper
A giant penguin that stood as tall as a person has been identified from fossil leg bones discovered by an amateur palaeontologist on New Zealand’s South Island.
At 1.6 metres and 80 kg (12st), the new species, Crossvallia waiparensis, was four times heavier and 40 cm taller than the emperor penguin, the largest living penguin.
Related: Fossils of largest parrot ever recorded found in New Zealand
Enormous penguins are believed to have rapidly evolved in the Palaeocene epoch – between 66 and 56 million years ago – after the dinosaurs disappeared and large marine reptiles also vanished from southern hemisphere waters that were much warmer than today.
The giant penguin was identified as new to science by a team from Canterbury Museum and Senckenberg natural history museum in Frankfurt after bones were found by Leigh Love, an amateur palaeontologist, at Waipara.
It is the fifth ancient penguin species described from fossils uncovered at the Waipara, where a river cuts into a cliff of greensand.
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| © AP An illustration provided by the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch, New Zealand, shows the approximate height of a giant penguin next to a woman. |
According to researchers, the penguin’s leg bones suggest its feet played a greater role in swimming than modern penguins.
It is not clear why the giant penguins disappeared from the oceans millions of years ago but it may be linked to the arrival of large marine competitors such as seals and toothed whales.
The new species is similar to another prehistoric giant penguin, Crossvallia unienwillia, which was identified from a fossilized partial skeleton found in the Cross Valley in Antarctica in 2000.
Dr Vanesa De Pietri, a natural history curator at Canterbury Museum, said the discovery of a second giant penguin from the Palaeocene is further evidence of the large size of ancient penguins. “It further reinforces our theory that penguins attained a giant size very early in their evolution,” she said.
When the Crossvallia species were alive, New Zealand and Antarctica were very different from today – Antarctica was covered in forest and both had much warmer climates.
