Equatorial Peru Penguins

Penguins have been marching for a very long time, and not just across the frozen wastes of Antarctica. Scientists have discovered the fossil remains of a rather formidable giant penguin that got as far as equitorial Peru, where it lived 36 million years ago.

The find is a surprise because at the time the tropics were even hotter than they are today.

Penguins are not unknown in equatorial regions, but the species living in them today all tend to be small. As a general rule, animals which migrate from cold climates to hotter ones tend to reduce in size because there is less need to conserve heat.

The newly discovered prehistoric penguin, Icadyptes salasi, challenges previous assumptions about the evolution and expansion of these animals.

Icadyptes was not the sort of penguin you would want to pick up. At over five feet, it stood almost as tall as a man and was powerfully built with strong neck muscles, according to the fossil evidence.

It’s most unusual feature, and probably a very effective weapon, was a seven-inch long pointed, spear-like beak.


Scientists found the giant penguin’s fossil bones together with those of a smaller ancient species at two sites on the southern coast of Peru.

The other penguin, Perudyptes devriesi, lived about 42 million years ago and at three feet tall was about the same size as a modern King penguin.

Both were described this week in the American journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

At the time when Icadyptes was alive, the Earth was still in the grip of greenhouse warming which had yet to give way the the “icehouse” conditions we are still - at least for the time being - experiencing today. The cooling period which produced the permanent polar ice caps only began about 34 million years ago.

Dr Julia Clarke, from North Carolina State University in Raleigh, who led US team, said: ““We tend to think of penguins as being cold-adapted species, even the small penguins in equatorial regions today, but the new fossils date back to one of the warmest periods in the last 65 million years of Earth’s history. The evidence indicates that penguins reached low latitude regions more than 30 million years prior to our previous estimates.”


By making comparisons with other ancient penguins, Dr Clarke and her colleagues estimated that the two species arrived in Peru from different parts of the world.


The ancestors of Icadyptes are thought to have originated near New Zealand, while Perudyptes hailed from Antarctica.

Dr Clarke warned that it would be a mistake to assume present day penguins facing climate change would be equally adaptable.


“These Peruvian species are early branches off the penguin family tree that are comparatively distant cousins of living penguins,” she said.


“In addition, current global warming is occurring on a significantly shorter timescale. The data from these new fossil species cannot be used to argue that warming wouldn’t negatively impact living penguins.”