{"id":167337,"date":"2023-07-11T16:28:51","date_gmt":"2023-07-11T21:28:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/little-penguins-that-once-lived-in-new-zealand-were-ridiculously-cute"},"modified":"2023-07-11T16:28:51","modified_gmt":"2023-07-11T21:28:51","slug":"little-penguins-that-once-lived-in-new-zealand-were-ridiculously-cute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/little-penguins-that-once-lived-in-new-zealand-were-ridiculously-cute","title":{"rendered":"Little penguins that once lived in New Zealand were ridiculously cute"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/little-penguins-that-once-lived-in-new-zealand-were-ridiculously-cute2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In a groundbreaking discovery, scientists have identified a new extinct species of small penguins that lived in New Zealand three million years ago. These creatures, described as \u201cridiculously cute,\u201d are ancestors of little penguins that continue to thrive today along the coasts of Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand.<\/p>\n<p>After careful examination of two fossilized skulls \u2013 one belonging to an adult, the other to a juvenile \u2013 the researchers named the new species Wilson\u2019s little penguin. The study was published last month in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/journals\/journal-of-paleontology\/article\/pliocene-fossils-support-a-new-zealand-origin-for-the-smallest-extant-penguins\/A722D072F8EE3B5FC194A33EF7DBC47F\"><em>Journal of Paleontology<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>According to Bob Yirka of Phys.org, the newly discovered species represents the oldest-known extinct little penguin. Given that the researchers have only the skulls of the extinct animals at their disposal \u2013 not their entire skeletons \u2013 certain details about the Wilson\u2019s little penguins remain uncertain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a groundbreaking discovery, scientists have identified a new extinct species of small penguins that lived in New Zealand three million years ago. These creatures, described as \u201cridiculously cute,\u201d are ancestors of little penguins that continue to thrive today along the coasts of Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. After careful examination of two fossilized skulls [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-167337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167337\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}