The Biggest Penguin That Ever Existed

H.P. Lovecraft "At the Mountains of Madness", 1931 describes these creatures from an ancient civilization in Antartica, millions of years ago: a "penguin... of a huge, unknown species larger than the greatest of the known king penguins, and monstrous in its combined albinism and virtual eyelessness."

Lovecraft was inspired by scientific expeditions to Antarctica that were in the news at the time, but the ancient, giant penguins are all his...

https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/mm.aspx

> “Once you know you’re not flying anymore,” Dr. Ksepka said, “the sky’s the limit.”

Truly.

Tangential: there were a bunch of big birds around shortly after 65mya (these penguins, terror birds in the americas, hell Australia still has the cassowary) . These are always understood to be modern-bird-like but bigger, not dinosaur-like.

Is this really known to be the case?

Maybe equivalently - are these big birds known to have evolved from tiny birds (yes birds-are-dinosaurs, look past it) that survived the 65mya cataclysm? Or instead could they just be big dinosaurs that survived? Is the marked distinction between therapods < 65mya and 65mya < birds really backed by evidence, or is at least some of it down to our preconceptions of what animals in these two eras looked like?

It would have been nice if the artist drew a human alongside the penguins being compared.

If I remember correctly there were a number of giant penguins here in New Zealand along with the world's largest bird, the Moa, and the world's largest eagle which preyed on the moa.

Something Strange Is Happening on the Sun, and We've Never Seen It Before: The Biggest Penguin That Ever Existed !

5'2"? what about the fifty foot penguin with electric tentacles?

Tekeli-li!