Pachydyptes
Graphical reconstruction along the lines of the recent king penguin.
(Also called the New Zealand Giant Penguin ) Pachydyptes ponderosus is a fossil representative of the Penguins ( Sphenisciformes ), who lived in the time of the Oligocene and Miocene. He is the only known representative of its genus and is considered by Anthropornis nordenskjoeldi as the second largest penguin species that has ever lived. The largest specimen found probably had a body size that exceeded the largest extant penguins by 50%. It was first described by the New Zealand ornithologist and curator Walter Reginald Brook Oliver in his book published in 1930 New Zealand birds, who also described the still living Snares Penguin, among others ( 1953).
Description
Pachydyptes ponderosus was probably up to 1.80 m tall and weighed up to 100 kg. The largest now living penguin, the Emperor Penguin ( Aptenodytes forsteri ), can be up to 1.30 meters tall and up to 50 kilograms.
Pachydyptes ponderosus lived in New Zealand. Like all penguins it inhabited beaches where he hunted big fish in the nearby sea.
Evolution
It is unlikely that Pachydyptes is an ancestor of extant penguin.