Inkayacu – Peru’s Giant Fossil Penguin and the Stories Its
Feathers Tell It sounds like the set-up for a bad joke: what was
five feet tall, ate fish, and was grey-and-red all over?
According to a paper published today in Science, the answer is
Inkayacu paracasensis, a previously-unknown genus of prodigious
penguin from the 36 million year old strata of Peru. Part of a
now-extinct diversification of giant penguins, Inkayacu
certainly would have stood out when compared to its living
relatives. At an estimated mass of 54-59 kilograms, Inkayacu was
roughly twice as heavy as today’s emperor penguin, and, like its
giant cousin Icadyptes, it had an hyper-elongated bill which it
used to snap up fish in the ancient equatorial sea. “If you
could have stood on an Eocene beach,” lead author and
paleontologist Julia Clarke wrote by e-mail, “their silhouettes
would have been striking – not quite a ‘Jaws’ film but as close
as you get in the penguin world.” What truly makes the first-
described specimen of Inkayacu remarkable