Scientists have unearthed in New Zealand fossil bones of what might be the heavyweight champion of the penguin world, a bird about 1.77m tall that thrived 55 million to 60 million years ago, relatively soon after the demise of the dinosaurs.
Researchers on Tuesday said that the ancient penguin, called Kumimanu biceae, weighed nearly 101kg and was much bigger than the largest of these flightless seabirds alive today, the emperor penguin, which grows to about 1.2m and weighs about 40kg.
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 in Germany.
Photo: AP
“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.
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, one 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,” he added.
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.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
RSS