Ancient Giant Penguin Fossils Found in Tropical Surroundings

Paleontologists have unearthed the fossils of giant penguins that lived in Peru millions of years ago. Stranger still, these early species thrived in regions that were much hotter than they are today.

The discovery was made in 2005 by paleontologists from the US, Peru and Argentina, and published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The first of the new species is called Icadyptes salasi. It lived about 36 million years ago, and stood 1.5 meters (5 feet) tall. It has an unusual skull with a beak measuring more than 30 cm (1 foot) long. It had more developed jaw muscles than current penguins, and likely hunted larger fish.

The second new species is called Perudyptes devriesi, and it's even older, inhabiting Peru 42 million years ago. These were shorter, about the same size as the King Penguins we have today.

These new fossils are surprisingly complete, and call traditional theories of penguin migration and evolution into question. Researchers believed that penguins started out in the low latitudes (Antarctica and
New Zealand) and then expanded North over time. This research turns that upside down, and shows they reached lower latitudes 30 million years earlier than expected.

According to Dr. Julia Clarke, assistant professor of marine, earth and atmospheric sciences at North Carolina State University:

“We tend to think of penguins as being cold-adapted species, even the small penguins in equatorial regions today, but the new fossils date back to one of the warmest periods in the last 65 million years of Earth’s history. The evidence indicates that penguins reached low latitude regions more than 30 million years prior to our previous estimates.”

Original source: NCSU News Release