Birds of a Feather Swim Together
Some new fossils shed a bit of light on the history of penguins.
If you’ve been reading this blog regularly, then you’ll have noticed that I have two particular loves in the animal kingdom: birds, and fossils. This post combines them both.
There’s been a truly wonderful fossil find in Peru. The remains of not one, but two, new species of penguin have been discovered there.
You can read a good news article on the discovery here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070625/sc_livescience/giantancientpenguinslikedithot
So what makes these fossils so interesting?
Well, for starters, the larger of the two new discoveries would have stood over five feet tall, and wighed more than 110 pounds. Most penguins today are less than 30 inches tall, and rarely weigh more than 15 pounds. Even today’s “giant” penguin, the King or Emporer penguin of Antarctica, is only two thirds the size of this fossil giant. This extinct penguin is, truly, significantly larger than modern species.
Second, both species were found in Peru, not far from the equator, in 30 million year old rocks. This puts them in a time and place with a much warmer climate than today. As the article notes:
The findings call into question the established idea that penguins evolved in high latitudes and didn’t waddle close to the equator until about 10 million years ago?long after Earth cooled significantly.
Thomas Henry Huxley, the famous 19th century exponent of evolution, once said that the finest theory can be killed by a single fact. Here are two facts, suggesting that perhaps penguins started out their evolutionary run with a much greater distribution than we thought. Remember: penguins like habitats, deep water and rocky coasts, that are not good for fossil preservation.
And were are penguins today? They are a modestly successful group of seabirds, widespread through the higher latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere. Again, from the article:
…17 penguin species inhabit the globe, ranging in size from the two-pound, 16-inch little blue penguin to the 84-pound, 4.3-foot Emperor penguin.
And while we think of penguins strictly as cold-weather birds, two species, the Humboldt penguin of modern Peru, and the Galapagos penguin, live year round in warmer climes.
