It has taken 26 million years, but scientists say getting the first glimpse of what a long-extinct giant penguin looked like was worth the wait. Experts from New Zealand and the United States have reconstructed the fossil skeleton of one of these giant sea birds for the first time, revealing long wings, a slender build, and a spear-like bill, which lead them to describe it as an elegant bird.
In research published this week in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, the scientists named the bird "Kairuku," a Maori term meaning "diver who returns with food." It stood about 4 feet 2 inches (1.3 meters) tall and had a body shape unique from any previously known penguin, living or extinct. Kairuku lived during the Oligocene period, around 26 million years ago.
The first Kairuku bones were discovered 35 years ago in New Zealand by Ewan Fordyce, a geology professor at New Zealand’s University of Otago. He recently collaborated with Dan Ksepka, a research assistant professor at North Carolina State University, to reconstruct a skeleton from multiple sets of fossils, using a king penguin as a model.
"It’s pretty exciting," Fordyce told The Associated Press. "We’ve got enough from three key specimens to get a pretty reliable construction of its body size."
Fordyce said the bird's elongated bill might have been useful for catching swift prey, and its large body size likely helped it swim longer distances and dive deeper than modern-day penguins. The bird is about a foot (30 centimeters) taller than the largest modern-day penguin, the emperor, and would have weighed about 132 pounds (60 kilograms), 50 percent more than an emperor.
When Kairuku was alive, most of modern-day New Zealand was submerged beneath the ocean. The scientists believe the remaining isolated, rocky land masses helped keep the penguins safe from potential predators and provided them with plentiful supplies of food.
Fordyce said there are several reasons why the giant penguins might have become extinct: It could have been due to climate change, the arrival of new predators, or increased competition for food from seals and other creatures.