Wilson’s penguin is important for showing that little penguins (i.e. species within Eudyptula) have been part of the coastal ecology of Zealandia for at least three million years. The discovery of Wilson’s penguin also suggests that the little penguins living in Aotearoa and Australia today are the descendants of an ancestor from the New Zealand region. Wilson’s penguin joins a growing roster of seabird species recognised from the Pliocene of Aotearoa which help to show that Zealandia has been a global seabird biodiversity hotspot for at least three million years.

Wilson’s penguin was the same size as little penguin, which is around 33 cm long and weighs 1 kg. Wilson’s penguin had a slightly narrower skull when compared with little penguin.

The holotype for Wilson’s penguin (NMNZ S.048854) is held in the collections of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. It is a partially complete skull that includes the cranium, upper beak, mandible and right quadrate of an adult individual. A second individual (NMNZ S.048855; paratype) was also described from an incomplete skull. This second individual was immature and died before all of the sutures between the bones in the skull could fully fuse.

The skulls from both the adult holotype and immature paratype were discovered by Karl Raubenheimer in the 3.36–3.06 Ma Tangahoe Formation within the rohe of Ngāti Ruanui and Ngāruahine in the southern Taranaki region of Te Ika-a-Māui North Island.

Wilson’s penguin was named for the late ornithologist Kerry-Jayne Wilson MNZM, who was an internationally respected seabird researcher and advocate for their conservation. Ms Wilson helped a group of residents in the Charleston area of the West Coast of the South to establish the West Coast Penguin Trust in the early 2000s. She was the Trust’s first Chair in (from 2006) and remained linked to the Trust as a scientist and mentor until her passing in March 2022.

References

Thomas, D.B.; Tennyson, A.J.D.; Marx, F.G.; Ksepka, D.T. 2023. Pliocene fossils support a New Zealand origin for the smallest extant penguins. Journal of Paleontology 97: 711–721.

Recommended citation

Thomas, D.B. 2024. Wilson’s penguin. In Miskelly, C.M. (ed.) New Zealand Birds Online. www.nzbirdsonline.org.nz