On This Day – December 13th

On 13th December 2017tThe remnants of an ancient penguin that stood as tall as a human were found encased in rock on a beach in New Zealand.

Fossil hunters chanced upon the prehistoric bones in sedimentary rock that formed 55 to 60 million years ago on what is now Hampden beach in Otago in the country's South Island.

Measurements of the partial skeleton show that the flightless bird weighed about 100kg and had a body length of 1.77 metres (5ft 10in), equal to the average height of a man. Emperor penguins, the tallest penguin species alive today, reach only 1.2 metres when fully grown.

Penguins evolved from flying birds tens of millions of years ago, but lost the ability to get airborne and became accomplished swimmers instead. Once grounded, some penguin species became much larger, growing from about 80cm tall to twice the size.

The pieces of the latest skeleton, including wing, spine, breast and leg bones, were first discovered more than a decade ago, but the rock holding the fossilised bones was so hard that it has taken until now for researchers to prepare and study the remains.

Rather than the usual black-and-white colouring, the ancient penguin was probably brownish and had a longer beak than its modern-day cousins. "It would most likely have been slimmer too and not so cute looking," said Gerald Mayr at the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Frankfurt.

Giant penguins went extinct about 20m years ago ,when marine mammals arrived in the form of toothed whales, seals and other creatures. What spelled the end is unclear, but the big birds may have struggled to compete with marine mammals for food, or may have become the meal of choice for the new predators.

Another species of giant penguin, discovered in Antarctica in 2014, may have been even taller than Kumimanu biceae. Bones from the 37m-year-old "colossus penguin", or Palaeeudyptes klekowskii, suggest the animal stretched two metres from beak to foot and weighed 115kg.

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