Paleontologists describe four new species of extinct ancestral penguins that help shed light on how the iconic birds evolved after dinosaurs went extinct

Sarah Kuta - Daily Correspondent

September 4, 2025 3:43 p.m.

An artist’s interpretation of what early penguins in New Zealand might have looked like Canterbury Museum and Tom Simpson under CC BY-SA 4.0 Modern penguins have relatively short beaks, which they use to scoop up krill, fish, squid and other marine creatures.

But that wasn’t always the case. Fossils from New Zealand suggest early penguins had “greatly elongated” beaks, which they probably used to spear their prey, according to a study published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society in August.

Paleontologists have identified four new species of ancestral penguins that lived roughly 57 million to 62 million years ago during the Paleocene, the epoch that followed the non-avian dinosaurs’ extinction. The team based their discoveries on fossilized remains unearthed from the Waipara Greensand formation, located roughly an hour north of Christchurch on New Zealand’s South Island.

Fun fact: New Zealand’s fossil penguins

Paleontologists have uncovered a wide range of fossil penguins in New Zealand, featuring an extinct little penguin that grew only about 13.5 inches tall and an enormous, much older species that weighed about 340 pounds.

The Waipara Greensand formation is a well-known fossil hotbed, particularly when it comes to birds. It contains the remains of some of the very first marine bird species to proliferate after the Chicxulub asteroid crashed into Earth 66 million years ago, killing off roughly 75 percent of all animal species around the globe.

Some of the survivors were the ancestors of penguins, which ranged in shape and size. Paleontologists have now discovered ten different penguin species in the Waipara Greensand formation, including a massive one that was the size of a human.

“These primitive penguins likely emerged after the extinction of large marine reptiles, suggesting they may have flourished by capitalizing on newly opened ecological niches, free from formidable mammalian competitors or predators,” study co-authors Vanesa De Pietri, a paleontologist at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, and Paul Scofield, a senior curator at the Canterbury Museum, write in an article for the Conversation.

Scientists suspect the lack of predators in New Zealand may have led to some distinctive penguin traits. For instance, without land-dwelling carnivores prowling around, penguins didn’t need to be able to fly to safety. Instead, their wings began evolving to help them “fly” underwater.

The fossils provide “compelling evidence” for these evolutionary changes, the researchers write in the Conversation, showing how the birds’ arm bones changed over time as they relied more on their wings for propulsion while swimming.

The newly discovered fossils also hint at how penguins’ feeding strategies have changed over time. The ancestral species had long, dagger-like beaks, which they likely used to stab their prey underwater. Then, the birds would probably return to the surface, throw the creature into the air, catch it and scarf it down, reports New Scientist’s Taylor Mitchell Brown.

Based on the fossil record, scientists say penguins kept their long, pointy beaks for more than 20 million years, even as their wings evolved rapidly. At some point, however, their beaks began to change, too, potentially in response to their increasingly aquatic lifestyles.

Paleontologists have unearthed the remains of ten penguin species from the Waipara Greensand formation in New Zealand. Al Mannering under CC BY-SA 4.0 In addition to the four new species, paleontologists also found the first complete skull of a previously known ancestral penguin species, Muriwaimanu tuatahi. The skull was so well-preserved that it even contained the creature’s beak, which is unusual.

“Fossils containing beaks, which can indicate a bird’s diet, are extremely rare for penguins from periods before [23 million years ago],” Tatsuro Ando, a paleontologist at the Ashoro Museum of Paleontology in Japan who was not involved with the research, tells New Scientist.

But the fossils from the Waipara Greensand formation contained yet another surprise: stomach stones. Modern penguins regularly eat small stones, known as gastroliths, to help with digestion or possibly control their buoyancy during deep dives. But this was the first time scientists had discovered stomach stones in prehistoric penguins, which indicates this practice dates back millions of years.

Zooming out, paleontologists say the fossils highlight the important role New Zealand played in penguin evolution. Because of the adaptations they gained in New Zealand, these iconic birds were able to spread out and colonize some of the places they still live today, including Antarctica, South Africa and South America.

Looking ahead, scientists are confident the Waipara Greensand formation will produce additional fossils that will “further enrich our understanding of how these iconic seabirds came to be,” they write in the Conversation.

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