Science is a ego - compensate process , ever in magnetic flux . recognized hypothesis are overthrow in the face of novel information . The world is n’t flat after all . Disease is n’t get by demon or wickedness . And that Hunter Island penguin ? Yeah , patently that was just a figment of our imaginations . Researcherswritingin theZoological Journal of the Linnean Societysay the remains of one supposed species are in fact a “ jumbled miscellany ” of off-white from three extant species .
The bones were unearthed in the 1980s during the excavation of a prehistoric trash heap on Tasmania ’s Hunter Island . Two scientists mention Tets and O’Connor argued that the clay were unlike enough from other penguin to constitute their own genus and specie , one which must have died out during the Holocene epoch . The gallant possible penguin parents knight the apparently extinct birdTasidyptes hunterivan , and that was that .
Except that this is skill , where no story is ever really over . Other biologists were not satisfied with the grounds Tets and O’Connor show . There were only four bones , and they all gestate some resemblance to species that exist today . as luck would have it , in 2017 , we ’ve got means of make believe fossils talk . A research squad led by Tess Cole of the University of Otago used DNA barcoding to examine the inherited code of each of the four bones .
“ It was a fun and unexpected story , ” Colesaidin a program line , “ because we show that Tasmania ’s ‘ extinct ' penguin is not actually an extinct or alone penguin at all . ”
The bones were “ a hugger-mugger mixture of three living penguin mintage , from two genera " : the Fiordland crested penguin or Tawaki ( Eudyptes pachyrhynchus ) and the Snares crested penguin ( Eudyptes robustus ) , both of New Zealand , and the Australian little fairy penguin ( Eudyptula novaehollandiae ) .
“ This study shows how useful ancient desoxyribonucleic acid testing can be , ” Cole said . “ Not only does it help us identify novel but extinct metal money , but it can help us decree out previously call for species which did not exist , as in this case . ”
