14 DAY TRIAL // A study published this past March 26 in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society details the discovery of several penguin fossils in South Africa. Specialists claim that the fossils are between 10 and 12 million years old.
According to Live Science, the fossilized remains of these ancient penguins are mainly backbones, breastbones, legs and wings.
Estimates suggest that the animals to whom these fossilized bones used to belong to measured roughly 1-3 feet (0.3 – 0.9 meters) in height.
For the time being, scientists hope that their examining these fossils will allow them to piece together a proper explanation for why it is that only the African penguin is currently left to inhabit Africa's coastline, despite the fact that at least four different such species roamed these lands about 5 million years ago.
“It's like seeing two frames of a movie. We have a frame at five million years ago, and a frame at 10-12 million years ago, but there's missing footage in between,” researcher Daniel Ksepka told members of the press.