A group of children discover a fossil of a giant prehistoric penguin

Fossils surround us. They could be on any rock formation, beach, or road we take, just waiting for someone to find them. Something like this happened in 2006 employment New Zealand. While at summer camp in search of the remains of prehistoric hedgehogs, a group of children came across the fossil of a giant penguin. Completely unknown to science. currently, With the publication of the study And in the magazine Journal of Vertebrate PaleontologyWe know that these fossils belong to a huge penguin that scientists named Foot diver.

I lived between 27.3 and 34.6 million years ago, about one and a half meters long

This unique species of penguin He lived between 27.3 and 34.6 million years ago And he obtained a measurement of about 1.38 meters, a Height enormous. The remains were found on this beach in New Zealand It was located in a hard-to-reach areaMany of these young men arrived in kayak after sailing through Kohiya port. “There were dark orange shapes in the rock, like rusty metal. One of the parents bent down and blown dust and sand away so we could better discern what it looked like. We still don’t know what it was about, but it was much larger than any other fossil we would have found before.” Esther Dale, one of the minors who discovered the animal, explained it in data she collected bass.

It is a very special animal. The hind limbs of this penguin are particularly long, so the paleontologists who participated in the study decided to name it foot diver, the name that comes from the language Maor. Word “feet” mean legs and “Roy”, Long. Basically, when observing its anatomy and characteristics, they think it is a huge diving bird with an unusually long beak, something that will help you get Greater efficiency when fishing with the same thing.

“The penguin is similar to the giant kairoko pens, first described in Otago, but has much longer legs.”, to explain Daniel Thomas, professor of zoology at Massey School of Natural and Computational Sciences. “But looking at its legs, we think that the penguin would be much taller than other Kairuku, especially while walking on land, probably around 1.4m in height, an aspect that could have affected how fast I could swim. Or how far I could dive. Thomas concludes.