Fossil of Human-Sized Penguin Discovered in New Zealand
The leg bones of Crossvallia waiparensis suggest it was more than five feet tall and weighed up to 176 pounds
A giant penguin that stood as tall as a person has been identified from fossil leg bones discovered by an amateur palaeontologist on New Zealand’s South Island.
The ancient avian came to light thanks to an amateur palaeontologist named Leigh Love, who found the bird’s leg bones last year at the Waipara Greensand fossil site in North Canterbury. Love alerted experts at the Canterbury Museum to his discovery.
At 1.6 metres and 80kg (12st), the new species, Crossvallia waiparensis, was four times as heavy and 40cm taller than the emperor penguin, the largest living penguin.
Museum curators worked with paleontologists at the Natural History Museum in Frankfurt, Germany, to analyze the remains, ultimately determining that the massive leg bones belonged to a new extinct penguin species. Scientists concluded that new species is most closely related to Crossvallia unienwillia, another Paleocene species found in Antarctica.
So far, analysis has led scientists to come to the conclusion that this species would swim a lot more than its modern-day relatives. The closest known relative to the species is thought to be the Crossvallia unienwillia, of which a partial fossilized skeleton was discovered in 2000, in Antarctica's Cross Valley.
C. waiparensis likely grew to its impressive size due to the same factor that fuelled New Zealand’s other towering bird species: a lack of predators. The penguin evolved in the wake of the Cretaceous period, which culminated in the extinction of not only dinosaurs, but also large marine reptiles that once stalked the Earth’s seas. With no major marine competitors, C. waiparensis burgeoned in size, thriving for around 30 million years—until large sea-dwelling mammals like toothed whales and pinnipeds arrived on the scene.
Dr Paul Scofield, the senior curator of natural history at Canterbury Museum, said finding closely related species in New Zealand and Antarctica showed the connections between the now-separated land masses.
He added: “When the Crossvallia species were alive, New Zealand and Antarctica were very different from today – Antarctica was covered in forest and both had much warmer climates.”
Fossils of the numerous giant species that have been unearthed in recent years will be displayed at Canterbury Museum as part of a prehistoric New Zealand exhibit later this year.
