British palaeontologist Thomas Huxley made this drawing of a fused ankle bone (tarsometatarsal) from the first finding of a penguin fossil. It was discovered in New Zealand at Kakanui, North Otago, in 1848. It belonged to a penguin that lived about 30 million years ago. The bone is dense, unlike a flying bird’s bones, which suggests that penguins had already long given up flight by that stage of their evolutionary history. Huxley gave it the name Paleeudyptes antarcticus.
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Private collection, R. Ewan Fordyce
Reference:
T. H. Huxley, 'On a fossil bird and a fossil cetacean from New Zealand.' Quarterly Journal of
the Geological Society of London 15 (1859): 672
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