It ran the year 2006 when a group of children, while searching for fossils of crustaceans in a summer camp in New Zealand, found a very different fossil.
It was the skeleton of a giant penguin unknown to date.
This has been determined by the researchers of the Massey University of New Zealand and the Bruce Museum, in the United States, after analyzing the fossil with a 3D scanner.
The investigation, which has been published in the magazine ‘Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology’, defines this new species as Kairuku Waewaeroa and qualifies it as “a new species of giant penguins”.
It is believed that this penguin can be between 27.3 and 34.6 million years and its height reached 1.38 meters.
His name, ‘Waewaeroa’, means “long legs”, as it was an animal with the longest legs of the usual among the penguins.
This discovery has served to clarify the process of development of penguins to become what they are today.
