About 60 million years ago, in what is now New Zealand, a huge penguin dove into the waters that covered the area. This penguin weighed about 150 kilograms, which is about the same weight as an adult gorilla. The size of this penguin was so impressive that, according to the findings of the study, there was no other penguin that surpassed it in size.
This giant penguin, which was named Kumimanu Fordyce, is a new species to science. The name Kumimanu Fordyce was chosen to honor Ewan Fordyce, a renowned expert in vertebrate paleontology, and the Maori language, meaning “monster bird.”
The Kumimanu Fordyce fossils were discovered by paleontologist Alan Tennyson of the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa. These fossils were found in 57-million-year-old beach rocks in North Otago, on New Zealand’s South Island. The discovery of these fossils has been published in the Journal of Paleontology by an international team of researchers.
To estimate the size of this new penguin species, the research team measured hundreds of bones from modern penguins and used these measurements to calculate a regression to predict the weight of Kumimanu Fordyce. The researchers concluded that the largest flipper bones belonged to a 154-kilogram penguin, making Kumimanu Fordyce the largest fossil penguin ever discovered.
Compared to emperor penguins, which are the tallest and heaviest of all present-day penguins, usually weighing between 22 and 45 kilograms, Kumimanu Fordyce was a real beast. At 150 kilograms, this fossil penguin was larger than any other known penguin species.
Study co-author Daniel Field of the Cambridge Department of Earth Sciences noted that the Kumimanu Fordyce fossils are amazing evidence of the history of life on Earth. He further explained that many of the early fossil penguins reached mammoth sizes, easily surpassing today’s largest penguins.
In summary, the discovery of the Kumimanu Fordyce fossils is an important milestone in penguin paleontology, providing exciting new insights into the development and evolution of these marine creatures. With this finding, researchers have a better understanding of what the penguin world was like millions of years ago.