Ancient relatives of penguins diversified quickly after the Cretaceous mass extinction eventMARK P. WITTONSCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Four new fossil species from New Zealand illustrate the striking diversity of the earliest penguins, which possessed long, dagger-like beaks they may have used to skewer prey.
The new discoveries provide a stunning glimpse into the earliest evolution of penguins, says Gerald Mayr at the Senckenberg Research Institute in Germany. Read moreLargest ever animal may have been Triassic ichthyosaur super-predator The fossils were unearthed from the Waipara Greensand formation in Canterbury, New Zealand, which contains rock dating back to between 62 and 58 million years old.
The formation is well-known for holding some of the earliest bird species that flourished and diversified after the mass extinction event that killed off all non-avian dinosaurs. We think that a key feature of ancient New Zealand was the absence of terrestrial predators, which enabled the loss of flight capabilities in the earliest penguins, says Mayr.
This lack of predators may also explain why some early penguins grew as large as humans, he says. In total, Mayr and his colleagues described four new species, which illustrate a broad diversity in shape and size.
*Reporting by Newscientist.*
