By Anne W. Semmes
Perhaps, in the old days paleontologists would just tell their boss they’re heading out to the field, the desert, the Arctic, with donkeys and supplies, and return in a few months with their fossil discoveries. But Dr. Daniel Ksepka, Curator of Science at the Bruce Museum, has his hands full with building natural history collections and creating intriguing exhibitions. Yet he is still managing by long distance to participate in bird fossil discoveries. He’s now reached in his 18year career the total of 73 “peer-reviewed” fossil discoveries, and today it is a penguin again, with its skull dating back three million years, found crushed in rocks at the foot of a cliff on the southwest coast of New Zealand’s North Island.
It’s not the largest penguin like that five-foot plus Kumimanu that Ksepka helped identify a couple of years ago, it having lived on the South Island of New Zealand some 60 million years ago. So, from the looks of this newly found skull the penguin’s height was “probably 39 inches” says Ksepka, and “probably belongs to the species Aptenodytes ridgeni,” so named for 11-year-old Alan Ridgen who happened upon some leg bones on the South Island that appear a likely fit with the found skull Ksepka notes. But “Until we find a more complete skeleton with both the head and feet intact, we can’t be 100 percent certain, hence our decision not to assign the new fossil to a species.”
What intrigues Kspeka about this discovery is its location. “It’s much closer to the equator… at a time when the temperatures where this animal was living may have been 18-36 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than [larger] king and emperors prefer today.” Also cool adds Ksepka, “This animal is large. It has this long beak. It had wide feet. So, it probably laid a single egg and balanced on its feet. So, why aren’t they in places like New Zealand anymore?” Ksepka and his peer review team are proposing, “They were wiped out by these large avian predators, these big hawks and eagles.”
As of “a little over two million years ago,” Ksepka explains, “the ancestors of the enormous Haarst’s eagle (wingspan over 8 feet) and the smaller but still impressive Forbes harrier arrived in New Zealand.” They proceeded to decimate the penguins busy “brooding their eggs on the open beach making their chicks and even adults easy targets.” Today’s penguins that survive in New Zealand “like the yellow-eyed penguin and little blue penguin, were less vulnerable because they either come ashore after dark or nest in clumps or vegetation or burrows (or both) which would help them avoid these predators.”
And now to know how inclusive that long distance discovery was made. Ksepka has long worked with New Zealand fellow curator Alan Tennyson at the National Museum of New Zealand (Te Papa Tongarewa its Maori name) located in the country’s capital of Wellington. Count also the Museum’s Dr. Felix Marx, a whale paleontologist., “interested in using isotope data to see what animals eat and figure out their ages,” tells Ksepka. And add penguin researcher Dr. Daniel Thomas of the University of Auckland.
Ksepka cites Tennyson and Thomas having brought the discovered skull fossil in 2018 to the Museum. They would then reach out to Ksepka early last year on the skull discovery. “I was thrilled to be invited,” tells Ksepka, “to collaborate on studying this remarkable specimen.” He then spells out their study modus operandi. “Daniel has a laser scanner that looks like an iron, and it shoots like eight lasers at the fossil… and it makes a 3D model of it.” That 3D model is then sent to Ksepka. “I can look at it in any direction as if it was on my desk, even though I’m 14,000 miles away.”
The three fossil sleuths “argue about it – we get on zoom and come up with ideas and we exchange things… What’s the most important part of the story? Is it about eggs or predators or climate…Usually there’s one person in charge of the project. So, you come to a consensus… you go where the facts lead you…then there’s interpretation.”
“We’re not naming it,” Ksepka notes, though “some people will go and name it right away and then let someone else sort it out. We’re a little bit conservative in that regard. We don’t want to be proven wrong later.” But Ksepka is betting on that skull belonging to that species Aptenodytes ridgeni named for that 11-year-old boy’s discovery of the leg bones. “What we need to do is find the foot of this or the skull of that, and then we’ll know if they’re the same species.”
Until then, stay tuned for further findings from Bruce Museum paleontologist Dr. Daniel Ksepka on his ongoing bird fossil research. He’s happy to have found over the years, “No one hates penguins. It’s nice to study them.”
