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(News)
– The Hamilton Junior Naturalist Club lives up to its name: its school-aged members are known to have discovered a new species of giant penguin. The fossil was discovered in 2006 in New Zealand, but researchers only identified the new species this week in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. The giant penguin identified as Foot diver lived about 30 million years ago, and the second word in this description translates to “long legs,” reports the Guardian.
The penguin was probably around 4 feet 6 inches tall, making it taller than today’s emperor penguins, known to grow to about 4 feet 2 tall, according to Courthouse News Service. The long legs probably helped it dive deeper and swim faster in an area that was largely underwater when the penguin lived. The young naturalists were on a field trip to Waikato, New Zealand when they kayaked in Kawhia Harbor and discovered what is perhaps the most complete skeleton of an ancient giant penguin ever. find.
“It’s a little surreal knowing that a discovery we made when we were kids so many years ago contributes to academia today,” says Steffan Safey, a member of the group who was 13 years old at the time. “And it’s even a new species.” As a Science Daily release notes, the penguin fossil record dates back to the age of the dinosaurs, and finds like this may reveal information not only about penguins, but the ecology of the time as well. The club donated the fossil to the Te Whare Taonga o Waikato Museum, and researchers from Massey University of New Zealand and the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut, conducted the research. (Read more penguin stories.)
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