Penguins Through The Ages

Thanks to their robust bones, which fossilise better than those of most other birds, we have a fairly good record of the evolutionary history of penguins.

- Peter Ryan

The earliest remains of Waimanu manneringi, a 1.2-metre-tall bird – similar in size to an Emperor Penguin – date back more than 60 million years. Gerald Mayr and colleagues recently reported that an even larger species, standing about 1.5 metres tall, also occurred in New Zealand at about the same time as W. manneringi (2017, Science of Nature 104: 9). Interestingly, the newly described species shows several features typical of more ‘advanced’ penguins, suggesting that penguins radiated rapidly after the Cretaceous- Palaeogene mass extinction that saw the demise of the non-avian dinosaurs. At least 12 more species of ‘giant’ penguins flourished for almost 30 million years. Their disappearance during the Oligocene more or less coincided with the evolution of toothed whales and dolphins, giving rise to speculation that either competition with or predation by these marine mammals (or perhaps a combination of both) led to the giant penguins’ demise.