New info from penguin fossils
2007-06-26 14:24
Washington - Penguins were
waddling and swimming in warm locales tens of millions of years
earlier than previously thought, according to scientists who
described on Monday fossils of two previously unknown types
found in Peru.
One of the two, named Icadyptes salasi, lived about 36
million years ago, possessed a long, spear-like beak, and stood
1.5 tall.
"This one had a beak you had to reckon with," North
Carolina State University palaeontologist Julia Clarke, who led
the research, said in a telephone interview.
It was bigger than any penguin alive today and the
third-largest penguin known to have lived, Clarke said.
'61 million years ago'
The earliest known fossil of these aquatic flightless
birds, found in New Zealand, dates to about 61 million years
ago, not long after the extinction of the dinosaurs and many
other life forms 65 million years ago.
The largest penguin around today is the Emperor Penguin,
which stands almost 1.2m tall.
The second newly discovered species was smaller and
slightly older than Icadyptes.
Perudyptes devriesi lived about 42 million years ago and
was about the size of today's King Penguin, about 0.76 to 0.91 m tall. It is thought to represent an
early part of penguin evolutionary history.
Both of these ancient penguins lived on Peru's southern
coast and were found relatively close to one another in a
coastal Peruvian desert in 2005. Penguins still live on Peru's
coast.
These remains are among the most complete ever found of
extinct penguins and throw into doubt existing notions about
the timing and pattern of penguin evolution and expansion.
Many scientists had believed that penguins did not leave
cold-weather regions like Antarctica and New Zealand for
warmer, more equatorial regions until perhaps 4 million to 8
million years ago, but these two newly discovered species
indicate this took place tens of millions of years earlier.
'Beautifully adapted'
Penguins, denizens of the Southern Hemisphere, populate
cold climates such as Antarctica, but also inhabit warmer
regions closer to the Equator like the Galapagos Islands.
They are beautifully adapted to life in the ocean, with
wings that have evolved into flippers, allowing them to swim
gracefully through the water, catching fish, squid and other
food.
The research, which also included scientists from Peru and
Argentina, was published in the journal Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences.