''Muriwaimanu'' is an extinct

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

of early

penguin Penguins are a group of aquatic flightless birds from the family Spheniscidae () of the order Sphenisciformes (). They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere. Only one species, the Galápagos penguin, is equatorial, with a sm ...

from the

Paleocene The Paleocene ( ), or Palaeocene, is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 66 to 56 mya (unit), million years ago (mya). It is the first epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), ...

Waipara Greensand of

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. Only the type species ''M. tuatahi'' is known.

Etymology

The name ''Muriwaimanu'' comes from ''muri'', Māori for "after", and ''Waimanu'', referring to the fact that the fossils come from younger strata than ''Waimanu''.

Discovery and naming

The

holotype A holotype (Latin: ''holotypus'') is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of s ...

was discovered in 1980 within the Waipara Greensand near the Waipara River, in

Canterbury, New Zealand Canterbury () is a Regions of New Zealand, region of New Zealand, located in the central-eastern South Island. The region covers an area of , making it the largest region in the country by area. It is home to a population of The region in it ...

, and it was initially named ''

Waimanu ''Waimanu'' is a genus of early penguin which lived during the Paleocene, soon after the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, around 62–60 million years ago. It was about the size of an emperor penguin (1 metre (3.3 ft)). It is one of the ...

tuatahi'' by Slack et al. (2006).Slack, K.E., Jones, C.M., Ando, T., Harrison G.L., Fordyce R.E., Arnason, U. and Penny, D. (2006). "Early Penguin Fossils, plus Mitochondrial Genomes, Calibrate Avian Evolution." ''Molecular Biology and Evolution'', 23(6): 1144-1155.
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et al. (2018) re-examined the specimen and determined that it belonged to a separate genus, creating the species ''Muriwaimanu tuatahi''. A second specimen from the Waipara Greensand ( CM 2018.124.4), identified as belonging to ''

cf. The abbreviation cf. (short for either Latin or , both meaning 'compare') is generally used in writing to refer the reader to other material to make a comparison with the topic being discussed. However some sources offer differing or even contr ...

Muriwaimanu tuatahi'' and consisting of a partial specimen preserved within two blocks of

sandstone Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...

, was discovered by Leigh Love in 2017 and was described by Mayr et al. (2020).

Description

''Muriwaimanu'' exhibited a long, narrow beak and paddle-shaped wings, and the fossilized remains also indicate it may have kept their wings in a flexed position during downward strokes, unlike modern penguins whose wings are kept extended, suggesting that ''Muriwaimanu'' may be a transition species for modern Antarctic penguins.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q55315059 Extinct penguins Paleocene first appearances Fossil taxa described in 2018 Prehistoric bird genera

Etymology

Discovery and naming

Description

See also

References