Got Penguin?
I was once asked in primary schools, ”what my favourite biscuit was ?” I told that person, “I like penguins” and they said “what’s a penguin?”
That chilling response has stuck with me for years. So I have decided to create this pseudo-comprehension history of penguins.
In the beginning, there was a dot or something then it got big, yadda, yadda, yadda, then the were dinosaurs, or if you don’t like Greek, terrible lizards. Dinosaurs first came about around 243 million years ago and they were pretty cool.
Then after 177 million years, all the big dinosaurs collected and agreed that they had a good game and it was time to get off the Xbox and go to bed but then a big rock from space came down and put to end of the age of dinosaurs, I know the were like 4 other mass extinction events before this but this one is the saddest, I would never have a pet Minmi.
Anyway, so yeah 76% of all life is gone, but it got better.
3 million years after the big bad sad times, things were starting to get better, in a little old place called New Zealand, but back then it was called Zealandia and was bigger and closer to Antarctica, a little 1 metre long creature called Waimanu wandered around, this was the first penguin, although it was barely a penguin, it didn’t even have the iconic penguin features like the colours or body shape but then came the big cahoona, 45 million years ago, coming in 1.8 metres tall and weighing in on 90 kilograms… Anthropornis !!!
Antropornis was pretty much the original penguin it had the looks and the feel of a modern, of course its wrists and elbows were a bit off, but Antropornis isn’t just any old type of penguin it is part of the Palaeeudyptinae AKA giant penguins. So it gets bonus points for being the largest currently know species of penguin.
With the arrival of the true tuxedo birds onto the evolutionary scene we can truly say existence had recovered from Cretaceous–Paleogene mass extinction event (the dinosaur meteor one).
Sadly all the Palaeeudyptinae went extinct some time ago, but then dolphins got better, so you win some you lose some.
As the world continued to turn, the continents began to drift apart and that’s why we got penguins in completely different places across the southern hemisphere. Separated from each other the penguins evolved and adapted to their environments until the modern day.
In 1488, Alvero Vello became the first European in the world to see a majestic penguin and then he decided to eat it.
In 1928, a man called William Macdonald made a biscuit company called “Macdonald”, William was clearly a very creative man, William them went to Antwrep in Belgium and got inspired by their food. William had a dream, a dream to create a chocolate covered biscuit with a chocolate cream sandwich in the centre, he then completed his dream in 1932. Macdonald, the biscuit company not William, got gobbled up by Mcvitie’s in 1965. These biscuits were called Penguins.
Boom full cycle. Bet you thought I forgot about the biscuit didn’t you?