Ancient Penguins Were Giant Waddling Predators<br />“They’re so unbirdlike that many people would not know they are birds,” Dr. Mayr said.<br />Realizing that it was almost as old as Waimanu, Dr. Mayr and his colleagues eagerly studied Kumimanu for a better picture of early penguin evolution.<br />“What would be cool would be to have a flying ancestor of penguins,” Dr. Mayr said.<br />The early Cenozoic oceans didn’t just open up the way for the evolution of flightless aquatic birds, Dr. Mayr speculated.<br />“We already knew penguins were around, and flightless, just a few million years after the extinction,” said Daniel<br />T. Ksepka, a paleontologist at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Conn., who was not involved in the new study.<br />“The new fossil shows they achieved immense sizes very rapidly as well, which is cool.”<br />Dr. Mayr speculates that the dramatic origin of penguins was sparked by the mass extinctions that marked the dawn of the Cenozoic.<br />Kumimanu wasn’t just exceptionally big; it also ranks among the oldest penguin fossils yet found.
