Science & Technology, New Zealand (Commonwealth Union) – Fossils have often played a key role in prehistoric findings, that have given us a better historic understanding of how life existed centuries ago.
The Fossil bones from 2 recently described penguin species, where one of them was believed to be the biggest penguin to ever exist, which was over 150 kg in weight and over 3 times the size of biggest living penguins that have been excavated in New Zealand.
A group of global researchers, that include researchers from the University of Cambridge, revealed their findings in the Journal of Paleontology. Senior author of the paper, Alan Tennyson from the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, found the fossils in a 57-million-year-old beach boulders in North Otago, located on the South Island of New Zealand, between 2016 and 2017.
The fossils then had exposure from within the boulders by Al Manning. They were noted as being between 59.5 and 55.5 million years old, setting their existence as approximately 5 to 10 million years following the end-Cretaceous extinction, paving the way for the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs.
Researchers made use of laser scanners to produce digital models of the bones contrasting them with other fossil species, flying diving birds similar to auks, along with modern penguins. The estimation of the size of the new species, involved the team measuring 100s of modern penguin bones and then calculated a regression applying flipper bone dimensions to forecast the weight as indicated in the study.
Conclusions were made by the researchers that the biggest flipper bones were from a penguin that tipped the scales at a staggering 154 kg. When contrasting, emperor penguins, the highest and heaviest of all living penguins, generally weighed between 22 and 45 kg.
“Fossils provide us with evidence of the history of life, and sometimes that evidence is truly surprising,” explained co-author Dr Daniel Field from the University of Cambridge, Department of Earth Sciences. “Many early fossil penguins attained enormous sizes, easily dwarfing the largest penguins alive today. Our new species, Kumimanu fordycei, is the largest fossil penguin ever discovered—at approximately 350 pounds, it would have weighed more than [basketball player] Shaquille O’Neal at the peak of his dominance!”
The name Kumimanu fordycei was given to the new species by the researchers in honor of Dr R. Ewan Fordyce, Professor Emeritus of the University of Otago. “Ewan Fordyce is a legend in our field, but also one of the most generous mentors I have ever known,” said 1st author Dr Daniel Ksepka from the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut. “Without Ewan’s field programme, we wouldn’t even know that many iconic fossil species existed, so it is only right he have his own penguin namesake.”
Various specimens of a 2nd penguin species were further discovered, which gave a detailed picture of the skeleton. This was dubbed Petradyptes stonehousei, weighing 50kg, lesser than Kumimanu fordycei but was still much higher than the weight of an emperor penguin. The name put together the Greek ‘petra’ for rock and ‘dyptes’ for diver, a play on the diving bird being preserved in a boulder.
These 2 newly-described species demonstrated that penguins became big early in their evolutionary history, millions of years prior to them fine-tuning their flipper apparatus. The team further indicated that they noticed the 2 species kept the primitive features like more slender flipper bones and muscle attachment points similar to those of flying birds.
The study was backed in part by the National Science Foundation, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) along with the Te Papa Collection Development Fund. Daniel Field is a Fellow of Christ’s College, in Cambridge.
Image1:- Life reconstructions of Kumimanu fordycei and Petradyptes stonehousei. Credit: Simone Giovanardi
