Modern king penguin swimming underwater.WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, JEFF KUBINA
A new giant penguin has been reconstructed from fossils collected from New Zealand in 1977, painting a picture of a uniquely shaped species. Named Kairuku for a Maori word, the language of the indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand, that loosely translates to “diver who returns with food,” the penguins stood about 4 feet 2 inches tall, with elongated flippers. Researchers used two sets of Kairuku fossils and the modern king penguin (which averages about 3 feet in height) to model its shape.
“Kairuku was an elegant bird by penguin standards, with a slender body and long flippers, but short, thick legs, and feet,” co-author Dan Ksepka of North Carolina State University said in a press release. “If we had done a reconstruction by extrapolating ...
