Giant Penguin

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Giant Penguin
Creature
Name:	Giant Penguin
AKA:	"Palaeeudyptinae"[verification needed]
Classification
Grouping:	Cryptid
Sub Grouping:	Megafauna
Data
First Reported:	1948
Last Sighted:	1948
Country:	United States
Region:	Florida
Status:	Presumed prehistoric survivor; actually hoax/observer error

[edit] Sightings

In 1948, several people reported finding large, three-toed animal tracks at Clearwater Beach in Florida. Later on more tracks were found along the shore of Suwannee River, 60 kilometers from the ocean. A young couple also reported having been harassed by a large creature that had risen from the ocean.

Later that year a giant penguin was sighted at distance. The huge bird was described as 15 feet tall and having alligator-like feet. During this same period, persons in a boat off the Florida Gulf coast reported seeing an extremely large penguin-like bird floating on the water. These incidents were reported in several newspapers. Later that year, another huge, penguin-like bird was allegedly seen from an airplane on the banks of the Suwannee River in northern Florida. The sighter, zoologist Ivan T. Sanderson, declared that the creature was a giant penguin that had somehow been driven away out its natural habitat^{[citation needed]}.

April 11. 1988 reporter Jan Kirby told^[1] in a St Petersburgian newspaper that the penguin hoax had been performed by Tony Signorini and Al Williams (latter having been a locally known prankster that died in 1969). Signorini told that they had been inspired by a photograph of fossilized dinosaur tracks, and had shown him the huge penguin feet made of iron that they had been using in creating the tracks. However, the repeated sightings of the bird still remain a mystery.

There were numerous species of gigantic penguins (such as the Palaeeudyptinae, Pachydyptes ponderosus, and Anthropornis nordenskjoeldi). These are known from considerable amounts of fossil remains, but all such lineages certainly became extinct some 25 mya at latest. They were never encountered alive by humans, and just barely by the earliest hominoideans; the 1948 other sightings are either also hoaxes or based on observer error (some sharks might resemble a giant penguin when seen from above under adverse conditions, for example). How and why Sanderson should interpret his sighting as he did, which was irreconcilable with biogeography, is unclear; the possibility of fraud cannot be excluded.

It is to be noted that the actual prehistoric megafaunal birds only ever occurred in New Zealand ocean waters. No ecological niche is known to have existed anywhere which could have ensured their post-Paleogene survival, as their known habitat and the neighboring regions are known to have been continuously inhabited by other penguin species and similar competitor taxa ever since.

Giant penguins based on the fossil finds also appear in Jules Verne's novel Journey to the Center of the Earth, and in At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft. In the last case, they are found in a fictious Antarctic underground setting and their presence is given a comparatively plausible evolutionary explanation.

[edit] References

1. ^ Bob Rickard (1992). Florida's Penguin Panic. Fortean Times No: 66.