Newly discovered
fossils
in New Zealand have
revealed
a giant penguin that was as big as an adult man.
The creature was almost the same size and weight as professional Canadian hockey player Sidney Crosby, who plays for the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Scientists estimate it was a little shorter than Crosby, at 178 centimeters (Crosby is 180 centimeters), and nine kilograms heavier.
If the hockey player and the real penguin had met on the ice, however, things would have looked a bit different. When standing up, the ancient bird only stood about 160 centimeters.
The largest discovered ancient penguin
The new discovery is larger than any other ancient penguin that scientists have found, says Gerald Mayr. He is with the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Frankfurt, Germany.
A possibly larger penguin is only known to scientists from a small piece of leg bone. That makes estimating its size difficult.
The largest living penguin species is the emperor penguin in Antarctica. It stands about 120 centimeters tall.
Mayr and others described the giant bird in a paper released this week. It was published in the journal
Nature Communications
. The researchers named the penguin
Kumimanu biceae
. The name is a combination of Maori-language words for a
mythological
monster and a bird, and the name of one of the author's mother.
The fossils are between 56 million to 60 million years old. That is almost as old as the earliest-known penguin fossils, says Daniel Ksepka. He works at the Bruce Museum of Greenwich, Connecticut. Ksepka has studied New Zealand fossil penguins but was not a part of the new study.
Ksepka told the Associated Press that the new discovery shows that penguins grew very large, very quickly. They grew just after a mass extinction 66 million years ago – the extinction that is best known for killing off
dinosaurs
, he said.
The event played a role in penguin history, as well. Before that, a non-flying seabird like the penguin would have been threatened by larger animals living in or near the water, as they competed for the same food. But after the extinction killed most of the larger animals, the ability to fly became less important.
This helped penguins survive and grow.
The question that remains, however, is what happened to the giant birds?
Mayr said researchers believe they died out when large
marine mammals,
such as toothed whales and seals, showed up and started competing with the penguins for food and safe breeding places.
These newer animals may also have hunted the giant penguins.
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