TY - JOUR A1 - Mayr, Gerald A1 - Scofield, Paul A1 - De Pietri, Vanesa L. A1 - Tennyson, Alan J. D. T1 - A Paleocene penguin from New Zealand substantiates multiple origins of gigantism in fossil Sphenisciformes T2 - Nature Communications N2 - One of the notable features of penguin evolution is the occurrence of very large species in the early Cenozoic, whose body size greatly exceeded that of the largest extant penguins. Here we describe a new giant species from the late Paleocene of New Zealand that documents the very early evolution of large body size in penguins. Kumimanu biceae, n. gen. et sp. is larger than all other fossil penguins that have substantial skeletal portions preserved. Several plesiomorphic features place the new species outside a clade including all post-Paleocene giant penguins. It is phylogenetically separated from giant Eocene and Oligocene penguin species by various smaller taxa, which indicates multiple origins of giant size in penguin evolution. That a penguin rivaling the largest previously known species existed in the Paleocene suggests that gigantism in penguins arose shortly after these birds became flightless divers. Our study therefore strengthens previous suggestions that the absence of very large penguins today is likely due to the Oligo-Miocene radiation of marine mammals. KW - Palaeontology KW - Taxonomy Y1 - 2017 UR - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/47048 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-470487 SN - 2041-1723 N1 - Rights and permissions: Open Access: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. VL - 8 IS - 1, Art. 1927 SP - 1 EP - 8 PB - Nature Publishing Group UK CY - [London] ER -