A new species of penguin has been discovered in New Zealand

A new study has been released Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology Scientists at the University of Massey have identified a new species of prehistoric penguin. It is a penguin similar to the giant pygmy penguin first described, but this model has very long legs. (Read: They discovered the fossil of a new species of four-legged whale)

The fossil was discovered in January 2006 at a summer camp in New Zealand during a group of children with an archaeologist. During the voyage, they made several kayak trips to the upper harbor of Guwahati, in which various fossils were found, for example mussels.

On one trip, they noticed a trail of non-Cetacean fossils. Also, a month later, they returned to the site to collect the remains, which had been donated to the Waikato Museum. Since then, researchers at the University of Massey and the Bruce Museum have begun exploring the fossil. (You can read: Scientists have discovered a new type of ancestral reptile in South America)

According to the data collected, the penguin is 27.3 to 34.6 million years old and belongs to the period when most of Waikato was underwater. Daniel Thomas, a professor of zoology at Massey’s College of Natural and Computational Sciences, told The Guardian: “Scientists are helping to fill in some gaps in natural history with this discovery. Can.

Mike Safe, president of the Hamilton Junior Naturalist Club, which oversees all of the fossil penguin’s work, said: , 6 m long from the tip of the foot to the tip of the peak, and 1.4 m high when standing. This will affect how fast it can swim and how deep it can sink. “(You may be interested: They discovered the DNA of a woman who lived in Indonesia 7,200 years ago)

Little is known about the presence of giant penguins in New Zealand, mainly only a few fragmented specimens from the North Island. Therefore, with these new data collected, it is possible to obtain their fossil records to understand how penguins adapted and how they evolved.