![]() ![]() Size and Weight: About five feet tall and 50-75 pounds.Historical Epoch: Late Eocene (40-35 million years ago).Name: Icadyptes (Greek for "Ica diver") pronounced ICK-ah-DIP-teez also known as the Giant Penguin.Like many birds recently discovered in China, the "type fossil" of Eoconfuciusornis bears evidence of feathers, though the specimen was otherwise "compressed" (the fancy word paleontologists use for "crushed.") ![]() As is so often the case, though, Confuciusornis has since been supplanted in the record books by an even earlier toothless ancestor of the Cretaceous period, Eoconfuciusornis, which resembled a scaled-down version of its more famous relative. The 1993 discovery of Confuciusornis, in China, was big news: this was the first identified prehistoric bird with a toothless beak, and thus bore a marked resemblance to modern birds.
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