DEERFIELD, IL (February 2012) – Penguins are hot today, despite being usually found in the cold. They've become icons of wildlife as they walked with their Happy Feet into pop-culture.

They’ve been popular with paleontologist as well, and new finds in New Zealand have shed light on the early fossil members of this intriguing group of birds.

An international team, centered at Otago University, have found and described two new fossil penguin species, including what may be the tallest penguin to have ever lived. The findings are revealed in a new article authored by Daniel Ksepka of North Carolina State University, Ewan Fordyce of Otago University and former Otago students Tatsuro Ando and Craig Jones in the latest issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Modern penguins are known for living in the southern hemisphere and having lost their ability to fly. Instead they use their wings to swim, and waddle up onto land to escape ice-choked seas and to raise their young. New Zealand has the largest collection of modern penguin species, and the same is true of their fossil relatives. This recent find helps scientists sort out some of the incredible diversity in these early forms.

The new species, named Kairuku waitaki and Kairuku grebneffi were part of a diverse penguin community from 27 million years ago. Kairuku (whose name means ‘food diver’ in the native New Zealand Maori tongue) is represented by nearly complete skeletons, which allowed scientists to determine that it had a unique form compared to other penguins, fossil or living. These penguins were slim, with elongate flippers and stout hind limbs. Based on the nearly complete skeleton,Kairuku grebneffi may have stood 1.3 meters (nearly 5 feet) tall, making it the tallest penguin to have lived.

Says Ksepka, “It is thrilling to see a completely new type of penguin turning up in the fossil record. Kairuku joins a cadre of extinct forms including the “proto-penguin” Waimanu, spear-billed penguins, and tiny divers. Each new discovery expands our picture of the incredibly diverse radiation of now-extinct penguins – now surpassing 50 species.”

The fossils were actually found years ago, and are only now being described. “The three key specimens were found serendipitously during field exploration for fossil whales and dolphins between the late 70s and early 90s. That work, and subsequent field study, places New Zealand’s Waitaki Region as an important source of southern hemisphere marine vertebrates,” said Ewan Fordyce, a Professor of Geology at University of Otago who discovered the penguins and organized the study.

Fossil penguins have been studied for more than 150 years, going back to Thomas Huxley, and these new finds are some of the best in that entire history, and speak to the reason why we still find these birds so fascinating. Says Ksepka, “New Zealand is a center of diversity for penguins today, and in the past Zealandia was even more of a penguin paradise. So far, ten different species spanning a large range of shapes and sizes have been discovered in similar aged deposits. The warm, shallow seaways and isolated coastlines of the time would have been a perfect environment for feeding and nesting.”

Source: Society of Vertebrate Paleontology