Do you know what the ancestors of penguins looked like?
Miscellaneous / / April 04, 2023
Once these creatures wore a harpoon instead of a beak and boasted outstanding growth.
Penguins are cute, if somewhat clumsy birds. Looking at these funny furries, could you imagine that their ancestors were ruthless, swift-footed hunters?
In general, evolution is a strange thing. We already toldthat whales are descended from ungulates - they are relatives of pigs, deer and camels. Penguins haveScientists Analyzed Penguin DNA And Found Something Quite Remarkable / ScienceAlert common ancestor with albatrosses and petrels.
True, unlike the latter, these birds relied on swimming, and not on flying.
The body shape adapted for diving is not very good for moving through the air, so the ancient penguins had toWhy Did Penguins Stop Flying? The Answer Is Evolutionary / National Geographic abandon flights more than 62 million years ago.
Scientists from the University of Copenhagen exploredT. L. Cole. Genomic insights into the secondary aquatic transition of penguins / Nature DNA of about 20 modern species of penguins, and also studied the fossilized remains of another 50 extinct. And here's what they found out.
The most distant ancestors of penguins, namedWaimanu - 60‑million year old penguins from New Zealand / University of Otago waimanu, in appearance and size, resembled a hybrid of a loon and current barrel fishermen, but differed in much longer feetT. L. Cole. Genomic insights into the secondary aquatic transition of penguins / Nature. Apparently, they were much more confident running along the coast than their descendants. Their beaks were elongated and thin, and the penguins did not dive, but swamK. H. Elliot. High flight costs, but low dive costs, in auks support the biomechanical hypothesis for flightlessness in penguins / Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on the surface of the water, like today's geese. These lived birds about 60 million years ago.
Later species of penguins grew to impressive sizes. For example, the kumimanu who lived 55 million years ago wasG. Mayr. A Paleocene penguin from New Zealand substantiates multiple origins of gigantism in fossil Sphenisciformes / Nature 177 centimeters tall and weighed a little over a hundred kilograms. And the paleevdipt that appeared 32 million years ago reachedPenguins/Smithsonian Ocean up to 2 meters in height. Its weight was 115 kilograms. With his long beak, he caught fish like a harpoon, diving after her into the ocean.
For comparison, the height of the modern emperor penguin is only 1.3 meters.
Another primeval penguin, Icadiptes, lived Penguins/Smithsonian Ocean in the late Eocene, that is, about 33 million years ago. He was only 1.5 meters tall and had a beak like a heron. But the most curious thing is that Icadiptes lived near the equator. The then penguins were not yet adapted to the cold, like the current ones.
But, unfortunately, all these giant penguins died out, giving way to smaller species. The reason is simple: feathered giants atePenguins/Smithsonian Ocean ancestors of modern killer whales and other toothed whales. After that, the remaining individuals realized that size is not the main thing, and degenerated into modern medium-sized, but numerous birds.
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