Fordyce’s penguin is the largest species of penguin ever discovered. It is also one of the most ancient.

The species is known from a single specimen, found in 2017, which was encased in a solid rock concretion. It consists of a complete humerus, a vertebra, and fragments of other wing, pectoral and leg bones. It was prepared out of the rock by Al Mannering.

The specimen has the largest humerus ever found for a penguin, with an estimated length of 236.6 mm. Its humerus differs from the humerus of the other species in the same genus - Kumimanu biceae - by having a substantially wider and more curved shaft and a proportionally less expanded proximal end. Based on the size of the humerus, Fordyce’s penguin weighed an estimated 150 kg. Many species in the early evolutionary history of penguins were giants, being much larger than today’s largest living species - the emperor penguin, which weighs about 30 kg.

Like all the earliest penguin species, in overall shape Fordyce’s penguin probably resembled modern penguins but it has ancestral features, such as less flattened flipper bones.

The species name honours New Zealand palaeontologist Ewan Fordyce and the remains are held in the collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington.

New Zealand Aotearoa has the richest fossil record of penguins globally, with 30 taxa described, covering the last 60 million years. The Paleocene sedimentary rocks (60-55 million years old) south of Oamaru have now produced three different species of fossil penguin: Bice’s penguin, Stonehouse’s penguin and Fordyce’s penguin. The fossils were formed when their bodies sank to the sea floor and they were buried and encased in rock. Subsequently, tectonic uplift raised the rocks out of the ocean, where they were then exposed on beaches through erosion.

Weblinks

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumimanu

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/fossils-of-a-340-pound-giant-penguin-found-in-new-zealand-180981611/

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/08/science/giant-penguin-fossil.html

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2023/february/largest-ever-penguin-species-discovered-new-zealand.html

https://fossilpenguins.wordpress.com/2023/02/09/giant-penguins-honor-giants-in-science/

https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/giant-penguin

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/131212246/fossils-of-worlds-largest-known-penguin-found-in-north-otago

https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/campus/penguin-named-after-otago-professor

https://www.massey.ac.nz/about/news/discovery-of-largest-known-penguin-species-reveals-significant-evolutionary-insight/

https://www.livescience.com/largest-penguin-ever-discovered-weighed-a-whopping-340-pounds-fossils-reveal

References

Checklist Committee (OSNZ) 2022. Checklist of the Birds of New Zealand (5th edition). Ornithological Society of New Zealand Occasional Publication No.1. Wellington: Ornithological Society of New Zealand, 332 pp.

Ksepka, D.T.; Field, D.J.; Heath, T.A.; Pett, W.; Thomas, D.B.; Giovanardi, S.; Tennyson, A.J.D. 2023. Largest-known fossil penguin provides insight into the early evolution of sphenisciform body size and flipper anatomy. Journal of Paleontology 97: 434-453. https://doi.org/10.1017/jpa.2022.88.

Recommended citation

Tennyson, A.J.D. 2024. Fordyce’s penguin. In Miskelly, C.M. (ed.) New Zealand Birds Online. www.nzbirdsonline.org.nz