Whether it's the online videos of them slipping and sliding all over the Antartic, or just their comical way of waddling around, penguins are one of nature's most popular animals, enjoying the sort of celebrity status that hippos used to have, before everyone realised that hippos are actually extremely aggressive (see also: Bill Cosby)
But whilst modern penguins are certifiably fun for Planet Earth - with an added cute factor that many of them mate for life - there's something a little less Disney about the Anthropornis penguin, a terrifyingly giant penguin that lived during the late Eocene epoch in the Paleogene period 37-45 million years ago. Fossil discoveries - including a 9cm tarsometatarsus (a bone found only in the lower leg of birds) suggest that this bird could have measured anywhere between 5.5 - 6.5 feet tall. By comparison, Emperor penguins are the tallest of the living penguin genus, at 3.5 feet tall.
I would love to be able to press a button and have a couple of hundred Anthropornis penguins come back to life and just waddle around, trying to inconspicuously blend into our crowd scenes. And seeing as they would have matched us at head height, a homo sapien vs anthropornis basketball match would make for interesting viewing.
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