Giant Prehistoric Penguins Revealed: Big but Skinny
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For decades, study co-author Ewan Fordyce, a paleontologist at New Zealand's University of Otago, had been happening across bones of the species while searching for fossil whales and dolphins.
Only recently, though, has a team reconstructed a full skeleton. This composite—created using a model of a modern-day king penguin—represents both species, which were quite similar.
The result is "quite a streamlined animal—it wouldn't look like any penguin that's alive today," said study leader Dan Ksepka, an avian paleontologist at North Carolina State University.
Instead of a modern penguin's rotund shape, each of the newly named species had a narrow chest; long, tapering flippers; and a narrow beak—a body specialized for hunting fish.
Standing about 4.3 feet (1.3 meters) tall, both species would have been taller than the tallest living penguin species, the emperor penguin, which can reach 4 feet (1.2 meters) tall.
Prehistoric New Zealand
In the penguins' time, New Zealand itself was mostly underwater—only a smattering of islets were above the surface. Shallow waves rich with food and protection from predators would've made the habitat ideal for the birds.
