Penguins Were Created to Swim
A new 2024 fossil analysis
fails to show that penguin flippers
evolved from flight wings
by Jerry Bergman, PhD
For decades, conventional evolutionary speculation has argued that penguins have vestigial bird wings which are now useless for flight. The Darwinian belief is that penguins’ wing-like limbs are evolutionary remnants of once-functional wings that their ancestors used for powered flight millions of years ago. As penguins “adapted to an aquatic lifestyle, their wings gradually became better suited for swimming than flying.”[1] The evolutionary view is that some birds have turned into very different animals which are no longer aerial but rather terrestrial and aquatic.[2]
Penguins are classified as flightless birds because evolutionists believe that they evolved from some ancient avian ancestor, as also did ostriches, emus, kiwis and other animals that allegedly had lost the ability to fly long ago.[3] In answer to the question on Quora, “Why do penguins have wings even if they can’t fly?,” Aerospace engineer Jeff Lewis (University of Maryland, College Park, MD) answered:
Because of evolutionary contingency. Penguins evolved from older bird ancestors that could fly. Those older birds had wings, so penguins inherited wings from those ancestors. Obviously, penguin wings have evolved for swimming. … penguin wings share the same basic anatomy as wings used for flying because that’s what penguins evolved from… evolution isn’t an engineer. It only tweaks what’s already there.[4]
Does Science Support the Evolutionary Story?
This year, a research team consisting of scientists from New Zealand and Japanese analyzed three bone fragments found in the Hakataramea Valley on New Zealand’s south island. The fossils belonged to Pakudyptes, a penguin about the same size as the modern blue penguin, the smallest known living penguin. The three bones they analyzed included a humerus, a femur, and an ulna.
A reconstructed image of Pakudyptes pictured on a New Zealand coast. Image credit: Tatsuya Shinmura & Ashoro Museum of Paleontology. Note some small differences were portrayed in the head to make it look more birdlike, which could have resulted from the artist’s creative license since no skull bones were found to indicate head traits. Even judging from this artwork, the external morphology of the creature renders it a fully modern penguin. From Corbley, et al., 2024.
Their analysis concluded that the bones belonged to a penguin that had traits from both extinct and modern penguins. The study was touted as enabling evolutionists “to pinpoint when these birds had turned their seemingly pointless wings into powerful diving aides.”[5] In fact, the study was able to do no such thing.
The modern blue penguin, the smallest known living penguin. From Wikimedia Commons.
All they determined was “the shoulder joints of the wing of Pakudyptes were very close to the condition of the present-day penguin, [and] the elbow joints were very similar to those of older types of fossil penguins.” From this observation they argued that the penguin they examined had skeletal traits found on both ancient and modern penguins. The authors did not even attempt to claim, however, that this fossil represented a transitional form between modern flightless penguins and primitive flying birds.
Surprisingly Modern and Amazingly Well Preserved
The so-called older penguin they analyzed was simply another variety of penguin adding to the 18 currently recognized penguin species.[6] The 18 species of penguin have white and black bodies that are all very similar except that they all have unique characteristics. This is also true of Pakudyptes that the researchers studied. They explained away the modern traits found on what they claim is a “42 million-year-old” penguin by assuming that the “changes in the penguin wing have occurred rapidly during this period,” and this is why they were unable to find fossil evidence supporting the evolutionary narrative.[7]
A penguin very similar to Pakudyptes, named Perudyptes, which is also based on a few bone fragments, sheds some light on Pakudyptes. What amazed researchers—and what is the take-home story here—is that the fossil they date at “42 million years old” is almost identical to modern penguins. Here’s how they state their surprise:
Perudyptes devriesi is an amazing fossil because it shows penguins were already thriving in equatorial waters by the middle of the Eocene Epoch, about 42 million years ago. The penguin itself is quite a gem in terms of preservation quality. Over 42 million years, a lot of bad things can happen to a fossil and often very little is left by the time paleontologists find it.[8]
The fact that it was in such good condition indicated that it may be far younger than the claimed 42 million years.
Not a Transitional Form
Perudyptes already had many of the traits of modern penguins, including the ability to dive deep into the sea. Likewise, Pakudyptes already had the adaptations in its bone structure designed for diving. Still, however, the other research paper from 2010 gave it an evolutionary story, saying that “Pakudyptes fills a morphological gap between modern and fossil penguins.”[9]
The basis for lead author and paleontologist Dr. Tatsuro Ando’s evolutionary account was that Pakudyptes’ wing shoulder joints were very close to those of present-day penguins, but the elbow joints, they thought, looked similar to those of fossil penguins.
By propounding an evolutionary story, the authors failed to consider the logic of Henry Gee, the former Senior Editor of Biological Sciences of the leading magazine Nature. Gee wrote in 1999: “To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story—amusing perhaps, even instructive, but not scientific.”[10] He added that “it is impossible to know for certain whether one species is the ancestor of another.”[11]
Penguins Are Well Designed for their Aquatic Lifestyle
Rather than useless vestigial organs, the so-called vestigial wings of penguins are now known to be very well-designed for their intended purpose: functioning as flipper-like structures that allow them to effectively and smoothly glide in the water. Their flippers give them excellent balance and agility, while maintaining stability and movement control, both in the water (when they dive and swim) and on land (when navigating rocky terrain).
The excellent swimming abilities of penguins is largely due to their dense, thick bones that contribute to buoyancy during diving. As a result, their streamlined bodies and flippers give them capabilities for rapid propulsion and maneuvers that are effective for pursuing and catching fish and other aquatic prey. Furthermore, their lungs help them dive deep. National Geographic wrote in 2013 that a “modern emperor penguin can hold its breath for more than 20 minutes and quickly dive to 1,500 feet (450 meters) to feast.”[12]
The penguin’s flippers also have an important role in regulating their body temperature. They have a high density of blood vessels close to the skin surface which effectively causes heat exchange, enabling penguins to stay warm in their cold Antarctic environments.
For these and other reasons, penguins are well adapted to the water. This brief review of some of the major innovations of penguins illustrates the enormous contrast between flying birds and penguins. It is also a major reason evolutionists have failed even to postulate the evolution of penguins from some primitive fossil bird.
Summary
The 2024 research by Tatsuro Ando’s team only added another extinct species of penguins to the list of 18 already-known species. No doubt more species will also eventually be discovered. Finding another species simply illustrates the variety of existing penguins and does not provide evidence for penguin evolution from earlier birds as speculated by the authors. Pakudyptes had a few minor skeletal traits found on both ancient and modern penguins. The authors did not attempt to claim that this new penguin species was a transitional form between modern penguins and their primitive-flight, bird ancestor.
References
[1] Corbley, A., “Tiny fossil illuminates penguin’s surprisingly useful wings and how they evolved,” https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/tiny-fossil-illuminates-penguins-surprisingly-useful-wings-and-how-they-evolved/, 6 September 2024.
[2] Corbley, 2024.
[3] Roots, C., Flightless Birds, Greenwood Press (now Greenwood Publishing Group), Westport, CT, 2006.
[4] Lewis, J., “Why do penguins have wings even if they can’t fly?,” www.quora.com/Why-do-penguins-have-wings-even-if-they-cant-fly.
[5] Corbley, 2024.
[6] Borboroglu, P., et al., Penguins: Natural History and Conservation, University of Washington Press, Seattle, WA, 2013
[7] Tatsuro Ando, et al., “A new tiny fossil penguin from the Late Oligocene of New Zealand and the morpho-functional transition of the penguin wing,” Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand 54(5):660-681, https://doi.org/10.1080/03036758.2024.2362283, 31 July 2024.
[8] Ksepka, D., “Perudyptes – Fossil penguins at the equator!,” March of the Fossil Penguins, https://fossilpenguins.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/perudyptes-fossil-penguins-at-the-equator/, 6 February 2010.
[9] Ksepka, 2010.
[10] Gee, H., In Search of Deep Time: Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life, Free Press, New York, NY, pp. 116-117, 1999.
[11] Gee, 1999, p. 155.
[12] Handwerk, B. “Why did penguins stop flying? The answer is evolutionary,” https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/131320-penguin-evolution-science-flight-diving-swimming-wings, 21 May 2013.
Dr. Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology for over 40 years at several colleges and universities including Bowling Green State University, Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in experimental pathology, and The University of Toledo. He is a graduate of the Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, the University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 1,900 publications in 14 languages and 40 books and monographs. His books and textbooks that include chapters that he authored are in over 1,800 college libraries in 27 countries. So far over 80,000 copies of the 60 books and monographs that he has authored or co-authored are in print. For more articles by Dr Bergman, see his Author Profile.