Posted on 10/01/2010 5:05:40 AM PDT by ilovesarah2012
Penguins didn't always boast tuxedo-like black-and-white markings, according to a new study. The discovery of the first ancient penguin fossil with evidence of feathers reveals the aquatic birds were once reddish-brown and gray.
The 36 million-year-old fossil represents one of the largest ancient penguins ever found. The bird would have been 5 feet (1.5 meters) tall, and probably weighed twice as much as modern Emperor penguins, which average about 66 pounds (30 kilograms). Its long, grooved beak suggests that, like modern penguins, it hunted by diving for fish.
Imprints of feathers in the rock around the bones could help researchers understand how modern penguin feathers evolved, said Julia Clarke, a paleontologist at The University of Texas at Austin and a co-author of the paper.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
News you can use.
I don’t know why, but the idea of a 5 ft tall bird scares the hell out of me.
From an imprint of feathers they speculate the penguin was colorful? Wonder if they ever considered that the feathers were from the buzzards that ate the carcass or maybe the penguin died while dressed up for a village people lip sync contest? Sometimes you just have to wonder about archaeologists.
Dooby Dooby Doo.......
I wonder if penguin is tasty....
How about one of these..
Tastes like chicken. Fat, blubbery chicken.
Yeah, I’m not going to sleep for a couple of days over that - thanks;)
Now you know you were wrong for that.... LOL!
Article: “Stranger still, the ancient penguin’s melanosomes didn’t match modern penguins’ and instead looked like the melanosomes of other modern birds.”
So then why would they assume that it is even a penguin? There are a lot of “probably”s in this article. I don’t see any carbon dating results on how they got the figure 36 million years, either. Lots of supposition here.
I liked the quote, “ “I think there will be more to the story of this penguin’s feathering.” which I translated to mean, “We are full of crap.”
Yep, pretty scary..........
Tastes like chicken-of-the-sea..................
Carbon dating is useful only for items less than 50k years............like Helen Thomas............
Paleontologists (not archaeologists). Yes, you are right about deducing the color of feathers from a fossil: generally, the fossil is colored by the minerals in the rock as it turned to stone, not by the color of the original feather
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