Giant Penguins Once Roamed Peru

Douglas Roberts points out as "obvious Linux fodder" the coverage of a study just published in PNAS claiming that, on fossil evidence, giant penguins once stalked the plains of Peru. One species goes back over 40 million years and its members were as large as modern king penguins. They were warm adapted. Members of another species, 30 million years ago, stood 5 feet high and made their living spearfishing with their 1-foot beaks. Here's an artist's impression.

Comments

Speaking of funny...

[benhocking]

I find it humorous that many people who think the environment is too complex and nonlinear to model (and hence that it's impossible for us to be really sure about anthropogenic global warming), seem to think that the economy is such a simple, linear beast that it's obvious lowering CO2 emissions will "cripple our economic growth". We on Slashdot have a phrase for this kind of biased reasoning - FUD. ;)