Fossilised penguin identified as new species

IN January 2006, a group of children aged between 10 and 18 attending a fossil-hunting expedition with Hamilton Junior Naturalist Club at Waikato, New Zealand, discovered a series of interesting fossil traces sticking out of a block of sandstone that had been uncovered by the tide. Initially mistaken for a rusty propeller, mentors Tony Lorimer and Chris Templer identified it as an avian fossil.

Donated by the club to Waikato Museum in 2017, the skeleton was measured, scanned and reconstructed as a 3D model, showing that the bird would have stood at approximately 1.4 m tall. Today, Emperor Penguin is the largest extant species of penguin, measuring up to 1.2 m in length and weighing up to 45 kg.

Described as the most complete fossilised skeleton of an ancient giant penguin ever discovered, researchers concluded that the specimen is between 27.3 and 34.6 million years old. The enormous diving bird had unusually long legs and beak for a penguin and the measurements showed that it would have towered over other species in the Kairuku genus. It is thought that the bird’s longer legs may have helped it to dive deeper or swim faster.

A recent study in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology has described the find as a new species of prehistoric penguin, named Kairuku waewaeroa after the length of its hind legs. In Maori, ‘waewae’ means ‘legs’ and ‘roa’ means ‘long’. ■

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References

Giovanardi, S, Ksepka, D, and Thomas, D. 2021. A giant Oligocene fossil penguin from the North Island of New Zealand. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. doi: https://doi.or g/10.1080/02724634.2021.1 953047.