NEW ZEALAND-The remains of a giant penguin the size of a human have been discovered in New Zealand. The fossilised bones are of an animal thought to have been about 1.6m (5ft 3in) tall, weighing up to 80kg (176lb). It lived in the Paleocene Epoch, between 66 and 56 million years ago.
The animal, dubbed “monster penguin” by Canterbury Museum, adds to the list of now-extinct gigantic New Zealand fauna. Parrots, eagles, burrowing bats and the moa, a 3.6m-tall bird, also feature.
Why was the penguin gigantic?
“This is one of the largest penguin species ever found,” Paul Scofield, the museum’s senior curator, told the BBC. It was specific to the waters of the Southern Hemisphere, he added.
Penguins are thought to have become this big because large marine reptiles disappeared from the oceans, around the same time that dinosaurs disappeared. “Then, for 30 million years, it was the time of the giant penguins,” MrScofield said.
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Today’s largest species, the Emperor Penguin, grows to about 1.2m tall. “We think that at the time, animals were evolving very rapidly,” MrScofield explained. “Water temperatures around New Zealand were ideal back then, around 25C (77F) compared to the 8C we have now.” During the time of the giant penguin, New Zealand was still joined with Australia, which in turn is thought to have been connected to Antarctica.