U. TEXAS-AUSTIN (US) — Paleontologists have unearthed the 36-million-year-old fossil of an vanished penguin that was nearly 5 feet high with red brownish and grey feathers.
The new species, Inkayacu paracasensis, or Sprinkle King, had to do with two times the dimension of an Emperor penguin, the biggest penguin today.
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"Before this fossil, we had no proof about the feathers, shades and fin forms of old penguins," says Julia Clarke, paleontologist at the College of Texas at Austin. "We had questions and this was our first chance to begin answering them."
She was the lead writer of a paper on the exploration in the Sept. 30 online version of the journal Scientific research.
The fossil found in Peru shows the fin and feather forms that make penguins such effective swimmers evolved very early, while the color patterning of living penguins is most likely a a lot more current development.
Such as living penguins and unlike all various other birds, Inkayacu's wing feathers were radically modified fit, largely packed, and piled in addition to each various other, developing rigid, narrow fins. Its body feathers had wide shafts that in living penguins aid improving the body.
Bird feathers obtain some of their shades from the dimension, form, and arrangement of nanoscale frameworks called melanosomes.Matthew Shawkey and Liliana D'Alba, coauthors at the College of Akron, contrast melanosomes recuperated from the fossil to their comprehensive collection of those from living birds to reconstruct the shades of the fossil penguin's feathers.
Melanosomes in Inkayacu were just like those in birds various other compared to living penguins, enabling the scientists to deduce the shades they produced. When the group looked at living penguins, it was surprised to find their shades were produced by giant melanosomes, wider compared to in the fossil and in all various other birds surveyed. They were also packed right into teams that looked such as collections of grapes.
Why, the scientists wondered, did modern penguins obviously develop their own unique way to earn black-brown feathers?
