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Penguins are no strangers to climate change. Their life history has been shaped by fluctuations in temperature, and their bodies are highly specialized for some of the most extreme conditions on Earth. However, scientists fear the penguin’s evolutionary path may have stalled, thanks to the lowest evolutionary rate ever detected in birds. An international team of researchers has just published one of the most comprehensive studies on penguin evolution to date, which is the first to integrate data from living and fossil penguin species. The research reveals a general chaotic penguin life history, with three-quarters of all known penguin species – now represented only by fossils – already extinct. “Over 60 million years, this iconic bird has evolved into a highly specialized marine predator, and is now well-adapted in some of the most extreme environments on Earth,” the authors wrote. “However, as their evolutionary history reveals, they now stand as guardians highlighting the vulnerabil

The strange creatures that raged in Earth’s oceans more than half a billion years ago appear to be the earliest vertebrate relatives we’ve found to date. They are called yunnanozoans, dating from the Early Cambrian about 518 million years ago. The cartilaginous features found in their fossil remains are comparable to those of modern vertebrates, paleontologists have found. This suggests that these animals were stem vertebrates, an extinct sister group to the original group of modern vertebrates. “The pharyngeal curvature is a key innovation that likely contributed to the evolution of the vertebrate jaw and braincase,” wrote the team led by Qingyi Tian of Nanjing University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in China. “The pharyngeal skeletons of controversial Cambrian animals called yunnanozoans may contain the oldest fossil evidence limiting the early evolution of arches, but their correlation to vertebrates is debated. “By examining additional specimens in previously unexplored tec