Happy Valentine’s Day from March of the Fossil Penguins

The Black-footed Penguins at the California Academy of Sciences have it good.  Every year, they get Valentines from people – and seem to enjoy them! This video is from last year’s ceremony shows a few eager penguins accepting their card. You can also check in on the colony live anytime here: http://www.calacademy.org/webcams/penguins/

Happy Halloween from March of the Fossil Penguins

This year’s best costume award goes to Inkayacu in steampunk explorer mode.  Several years ago, while Julia Clarke and I were planning illustrations for the paper describing Inkayacu, the multi-talented  Katie Browne (artist and paleontology student) sketched a mock-up of the general shape of the penguin.  Sometimes, when you work too late fossil animals start getting jetpacks and top hats (it has happened before, I’ll admit). Here is the result:

Inkayacu may knock on your door this Halloween- make sure to stock up on anchovies and flying squid! Artwork courtesy of Katie Browne.

Cookie the Little Blue Penguin

No fossil penguin news this week, though I am awaiting the launch of a new paper by our team to share at March of the Fossil Penguins. Instead, let’s take a penguin humor break. This video of a Little Blue Penguin (Eudyptula minor) being tickled has already been viewed 5 million times, so why not share it with a few more people?

Happy Valentine’s Day from March of the Fossil Penguins

We always try to find some holiday-related penguin content and here is one of the more unusual Valentine’s stories for penguins.  A pair of penguins at the Shanghai Ocean Aquarium is being married (twice a day no less). Xiaobai and Xiaoxue are Humboldt Penguins.  They were chosen because this species, like many penguins, often forms strong pair bonds.  The best part of the video is seeing the penguins being driven in  a remote control car.

 

For more Valentine’s themed penguin posts, click here, here, or here.

Palaeoapterodytes ictus, the flightless, swimless penguin

Following up last week’s post on a humorous mistaken “discovery”, this post revisits a bizarre misinterpretation of the fossil record. Patagonia is a land rich in fossils of all kinds, from giant sauropod dinosaurs to the tank-like armored mammalian glypotodons.  Most of these fossils are found in terrestrial deposits, but near the coast ancient marine rocks preserve a wealth remains from sea-going creatures, including a diverse set of penguins.  Sediments dating to about 20 million years ago are the main penguin bearing deposits, and the most common fossils belong to Palaeospheniscus.  The famed Paraptenodytes also lived in this region.

One of the major follies in penguin paleontology was the naming of Palaeoapterodytes ictus in 1905 by the famous Argentine paleontologist Florentino Ameghino.  The name means ancient wingless diver.  Only a single bone was used to name the species, a humerus (the main bone of the flipper).  The bone lacked is distal end, leaving Ameghino to surmise that the species had evolved towards extreme reduction of the flipper, leaving only a tiny stub of bone.  Flightless birds have reduced their wings many, many times over the course of evolutionary history.  However, penguins aren’t truly flightless when one considers that they “fly” through the water using their flippers just like volant birds fly through the air with their wings.  A wingless penguin would be an awkward fellow indeed.  I’d assume such a creature would be restricted to hopping around on the shore and perhaps making one good leap into the ocean before floating away like a buoy with no way to control itself. 
In reality, the bone was just damaged.  Lambrecht pointed this out in his 1933 monograph on fossil birds of the world. George Gaylord Simpson, in the days when scientists were permitted to write in a more engaging voice, wrote of Palaeoapterodytes ictus “based on a manifest error, the name might best be quietly forgotten.” Still, it is interesting to imagine what such a penguin may have looked like….

A chinstrap penguin modeled into Palaeoapterodytes with the help of photoshop

Happy Valentine’s Day from March of the Fossil Penguins

Spheniscus demersus in South Africa - this picture was not staged.

Happy Halloween from March of the Fossil Penguins!

Some of our favorite fossil and living penguins have dressed in their Halloween costumes for you – or the children in your life – to print and color. Click here to download a pdf!

(Be sure to have the “scale to printable area” option selected when you print this file.)

Penguins Chasing a Butterfly

None are fossil penguins, but this is too good not to share:

Not so fossil penguin loose in the Georgia Aquarium

Happy Valentines Day from a non-fossil penguin.