Science

The ancient 1.5 metre monster penguins whose 62 million-year-old fossils were found in North Canterbury had doppelgangers in Japan, the United States and Canada, a study has found. The

plotopterids, a group of much younger Northern Hemisphere birds, have been identified as having a striking resemblance in bone structure to our monster penguins. The finding was published this week in the Journal of Zoological Systematics and Evolutionary Research and had contributions from scientists at Canterbury Museum and in Germany and the US. Museum curator Dr Paul Scofield said while the birds evolved tens of millions of years apart, from a distance it would be hard to tell them apart. The up to 2m-long plotopterids are more closely related to gannets, cormorants and boobies than they are to penguins.