Scientists have identified a new penguin species for the first time in more than a century. It is not an unknown animal found for the first time, however: the separate species had been hiding within the familiar gentoo penguin.
Because it looks like other gentoos, it is hard to tell apart by eye; the difference shows up in its genes. A team of researchers from UC Berkeley in the United States and from Chile reached the finding through DNA testing. The new species has been named Pygoscelis kerguelensis and is being called the south-eastern gentoo penguin.
Its main home is the remote Kerguelen Islands in the Indian Ocean, north of Antarctica. Researchers believe its long isolation there produced distinct genetic traits.
Specimens of these penguins were in fact collected from Kerguelen almost a century ago, but genetic testing was not advanced enough then to recognise them as a separate species.
The study, published in the journal Communications Biology, says the gentoo is not one species but four, which began to diverge between about 300,000 and 500,000 years ago.
Photo: Liam Quinn / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Source: Ei Samay
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