Fossils of a 340-Pound Giant Penguin Found in New Zealand

February 20, 2023 9:07 PM

Fossils of a 340-Pound (154 kilogram) Giant Penguin Found in New Zealand. Paleontologists unearthed the bones of two new penguin species that lived 50 million years ago.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (27 comments total)

Q: What does a 340-pound (154 kilogram) giant penguin eat?

A: Anything it wants!
posted by aubilenon at 10:56 PM on February 20, 2023 [5 favorites]

“If you’re a little one-pound penguin, a gull can just rip your head off,” first author Daniel Ksepka of the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut, tells the Times. “But a 300-pound penguin is not going to worry about a sea gull landing near it, because it would just crush it.”

I mean, what's with these academics and all their technical jargon?
posted by piyushnz at 11:11 PM on February 20, 2023 [15 favorites]

Obviously next week's news: Fossils of 600-Pound giant sea gulls found in New Zealand
posted by piyushnz at 11:16 PM on February 20, 2023 [19 favorites]

and they told me this was fake
posted by philip-random at 11:23 PM on February 20, 2023 [5 favorites]

When Antarctica became glaciated, the penguins retreated to a heated underground abyss, although years of evolution in these depths "destroyed their pigmentation and atrophied their eyes to mere useless slits." Despite being incredibly large, they are harmless, calm and apathetic towards humans. Having lived side by side with the Elder things, they learned to be unbothered by their horrible stench. However, the smell of the shoggoths will put them in a frenzied panic.

Well, *phew* just keep breeding your weird guardian penguins!
posted by Avelwood at 11:25 PM on February 20, 2023 [13 favorites]

Don't so much worry about what it eats, worry about what eats it
posted by mbo at 11:39 PM on February 20, 2023 [3 favorites]

Opus Smash!
posted by fairmettle at 11:55 PM on February 20, 2023 [6 favorites]

Riley Black wrote a piece for Slate on why land animals today are smaller than they were (tl:dr our bad, we did it)
posted by Kattullus at 12:51 AM on February 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

It's worth noting that NZ was one of the last places on earth to be discovered by humans, about a 1000 years ago, those penguins were long gone ... on the other hand we had moa and the aforementioned Poukai eagle which are now gone, likely due to humans
posted by mbo at 1:20 AM on February 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

Katullus' post led me to ice age giant beaver.
posted by biffa at 3:59 AM on February 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

NOOT NOOT
posted by The Monster at the End of this Thread at 4:04 AM on February 21, 2023 [4 favorites]

There's something very Monty Python about this discovery. I want to see a cutout of the 340 pound peak from behind a roof and call out "Dinsdale!"
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 4:09 AM on February 21, 2023 [3 favorites]

Look on the bright side: global warming will destroy civilization and bring back the megafauna.
posted by rikschell at 5:15 AM on February 21, 2023

The decadent cartouches and dadoes telling this story were, as I have said, the latest we could find in our limited search. They left us with a picture of the Old Ones shuttling back and forth betwixt the land city in summer and the sea-cavern city in winter, and sometimes trading with the sea-bottom cities off the antarctic coast. By this time the ultimate doom of the land city must have been recognised, for the sculptures shewed many signs of the cold’s malign encroachments. Vegetation was declining, and the terrible snows of the winter no longer melted completely even in midsummer. The saurian livestock were nearly all dead, and the mammals were standing it none too well. To keep on with the work of the upper world it had become necessary to adapt some of the amorphous and curiously cold-resistant shoggoths to land life; a thing the Old Ones had formerly been reluctant to do. The great river was now lifeless, and the upper sea had lost most of its denizens except the seals and whales. All the birds had flown away, save only the great, grotesque penguins.
posted by doctornemo at 5:50 AM on February 21, 2023 [5 favorites]

Came here to post Lovecraft quotes. Gladdened to see that I was already too late. Tekeli-li!
posted by bouvin at 5:57 AM on February 21, 2023 [3 favorites]

NOOT NOOT
~ said the Penguin Elder God
posted by Fizz at 6:13 AM on February 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

OKAY! OKAY! I'll reread At the Mountains of Madness. Dang.
posted by Splunge at 7:00 AM on February 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

I have no fear of anyone, I'm dumb and wild and free,
I am a flightless bird, and there'll be no more after me

(to be fair, sounds like this one isn't on the humans' ledger)
posted by praemunire at 7:43 AM on February 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

Is it a bird, or a dinosaur that survived the KT-extinction?

(both, of course, but this bird is definitely a tribute to the ancestors)
posted by jb at 8:12 AM on February 21, 2023

There's something very Monty Python about this discovery.

Beautiful plumage!
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:41 AM on February 21, 2023

There's something very Monty Python about this discovery.

Electric, 20 feet high, and green tentacles or GTFO.
posted by whuppy at 11:03 AM on February 21, 2023

If this post is making you want to re-read At the Mountains of Madness, consider reading the manga adaptation by Gou Tanabe! It's really good!

Tekeli-li-liiii~
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 11:20 AM on February 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

yeah, that weight is more than a Great Auk.
posted by ovvl at 5:48 PM on February 21, 2023

And now finally here’s an AOW Dire Penguin worthy of the name.
posted by notyou at 5:50 PM on February 21, 2023

Dire Penguin

That ain't waddlin'
That's the way you do it
Get your fishies for nothin'
And your nests for free
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:19 PM on February 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

I want my
I want my
I want my peng-uin feed
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:25 PM on February 21, 2023

When I awoke, the Dire Penguin, three hundred forty pounds of sin
Was grinning at my window, all I said was come on in
Don't murder me, I beg of you, don't murder me
Please, don't murder me.
posted by whatevernot at 4:10 PM on February 22, 2023 [2 favorites]