Prehistoric Penguins

Tristan Hughes (0:00)

Penguins. Today, we think of them as the fluffy, small Antarctic birds, perfectly built to dart through the cold waters of the Southern Hemisphere, hunting prey tens, if not hundreds of meters beneath the water. The iconic aquatic bird. But penguins weren't always so cute and cuddly. They descend from dinosaurs. And for millions of years, penguins were prehistoric apex predators in the Southern Ocean. The largest being more than six foot tall, earning the name Colossus. Yes, the largest prehistoric penguins that we know of. They weren't just ferocious sea predators. They were also the size of many NBA basketball players today.

So what do we know about these early penguins? How do they emerge after the extinction of the dinosaurs? And how do we get from these prehistoric beasts to the lovable creatures we know today?

Welcome to The Ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and this is the story of prehistoric penguins. Our guest is Dr. Steve Brusatte, personal chair of paleontology and evolution at Edinburgh University, and the author of the brand new book, The Story of Birds.

Steve, welcome back. Great to have you on the show, as always.

Steve Brusatte (1:35)

As always, we talked about Terror Birds, now we can talk about penguins.

Tristan Hughes (1:40)

I don't think I've been so excited for an episode. Ever? In some time.

Yeah, that's a high bar.

Steve Brusatte (1:47)

Okay, okay, okay. I'll try to live up to it.

Tristan Hughes (1:49)

Because these Q&A things, they have their own prehistoric story when they weren't so small. And yeah, as we know them today, they have their own prehistoric story. Very cool one, too.

Steve Brusatte (2:01)

They do. And I must say a shout out to my son, my six-year-old son, Anthony, this little plush penguin here. It looks like something I could have just plucked off his bed this morning. Not that I would have done that before I came to meet you guys, but he loves penguins, and he must have at least 10, if not 20 stuffed plush penguins of all kinds. People give them to him as gifts all the time. Somebody goes to New Zealand or to South Africa or somewhere, a family friend or a friend of a friend. They know to bring Anthony a penguin because he loves him that much. And in fact, if you ask him what his favorite dinosaur is, you might expect a six-year-old boy to say T-Rex or Spinosaurus or Velociraptor, but he'll say penguins.

Because he knows birds of all from dinosaurs, of course, because I teach him the good stuff. But he's not super into the ferocious canonical dinosaurs, but he absolutely loves penguins. And what he didn't know, but what he knows now and what he loves is that penguins do have this prehistoric past where they weren't always these cute, cuddly, fluffy, charismatic little creatures. They had a darker history.

Tristan Hughes (3:13)

And can we also say that penguins are dinosaurs?

Steve Brusatte (3:16)

They absolutely are, in the sense that all modern birds are dinosaurs. And the way... Look, I know it's weird to think about it.

And I get this all the time. You know, in the story of birds, in my new book, the early part of the book is establishing what we mean when we say birds are dinosaurs, how birds evolved from dinosaurs. And I know it sounds weird because when you look at a sparrow or you look at a crow or you look at a penguin, it doesn't look anything like a T-Rex, like a Triceratops, but dinosaurs were a very diverse group. They lived for a long time. They're kind of like mammals today. There's all kinds of mammals, big ones and small ones, bats and whales and elephants and horses and mice and people and everything in between, similar with dinosaurs. There were lots of different types of dinosaurs. And there was one type of dinosaur that got small, grew wings and started to fly. Those were the birds, similar to how there was one type of mammal that got small, grew wings, started to fly. Those were the bats. So we should really think of birds as the dinosaur equivalent of a bat. But the difference, of course, of course, is that all the other dinosaurs have died, leaving only birds.

And if you could imagine, I mean, it's kind of morbid because it means we wouldn't be here. But if every type of mammal died except for bats, that's kind of the world we're in with birds. So yes, birds are dinosaurs. It's not a technicality. It's not a turn of phrase. They literally are part of the dinosaur family tree. They evolved from other dinosaurs. They are dinosaurs. That means that a penguin, when you see a penguin in a zoo, or if you're lucky enough to go on a cruise to Antarctica or to New Zealand to see penguins, you're looking at dinosaurs. You're going dinosaur watching.