Penguins are flightless seabirds that can be found almost exclusively in the southern hemisphere.
Did you know that a human-sized penguin once wandered through New Zealand? A study published in 2019 in the Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology . Scientists found the remains of a penguin that measured up to 1.60 meters and weighed 80 kg . They called it Crossvallia waiparensis and their discovery was relevant because the bird found is similar to another giant penguin found in Antarctica in 2000, which allows the two regions to be connected.
New Zealand’s list of extinct bulky birds is generous : a massive moa, a colossal Haast’s eagle, the great parrot called “Squawkzilla,” and lastly, this Paleocene-era penguin that was as tall as a human. .
This penguin came to light thanks to an amateur paleontologist named Leigh Love, who found the bird’s leg bones last year at the Waipara Greensand fossil site in north Canterbury, a hotbed of penguin remains dating back to the Paleocene. , which lasted from 65.5 to 55.8 million years ago. However, these fossils represented “one of the largest penguin species ever found.”
Much larger than the emperor penguin, which can grow to around 1.10 meters tall and weigh up to 40 kilos, scientists believe that Crossvallia waiparensis grew so much in size due to the same factor that fed New Zealand’s other bird species. : the lack of predators. The penguin evolved in the wake of the Cretaceous period, culminating in the extinction of not only dinosaurs, but also the large marine reptiles that once haunted Earth’s oceans. Having no great marine competitors, it rose majestically; it flourished in size, thriving for about 30 million years, until large marine mammals like toothed whales entered the scene.
According to the study authors, C. waiparensis is also important because it is the “oldest and best represented giant penguin” known to science . This in turn suggests that penguins reached enormous size very early in their evolution, a theory that experts had already advanced based on the Antarctic specimen.
