Kumimanu
Sign in to saveKumimanu is an extinct genus of giant penguin, which lived around 56 to 60 million years ago. The type species is Kumimanu biceae, which arose after the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs. Fossils were found in New Zealand, and the discovery was announced in December 2017. A second species, Kumimanu fordycei, was named in February 2023, though some researchers consider it synonymous with the type species.
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Encyclopedic overview
3 sectionsContents
- Discovery and naming
- Description
- References
Kumimanu is an extinct genus of giant penguin, which lived around 56 to 60 million years ago. The type species is Kumimanu biceae, which arose after the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs. Fossils were found in New Zealand, and the discovery was announced in December 2017. A second species, Kumimanu fordycei, was named in February 2023, though some researchers consider it synonymous with the type species.
== Discovery and naming == The Kumimanu fossil material were found by a group of researchers from the Hampden Beach of Otago, on the South Island of New Zealand. The fossils are from the Paleocene Waipara Greensand. The fossils were studied by a New Zealand and German team, led by Gerald Mayr of the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum. He was the lead author of an article on the subject published online in December 2017.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Kumimanu” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.