Meet 'small diver': One of the tiniest penguins ever discovered

A tiny penguin that waddled, swam and dove around the coasts of southern New Zealand 24 million years ago is "key" to deciphering how living penguins got their wings, a new study finds. 

Researchers first unearthed fossils of the 1-foot-tall (0.3 meter) penguin back in the 1980s, but it has been an evolutionary enigma for decades, despite being one of the smallest penguins ever discovered. 

A team has now re-analyzed the fossils and found they belong to a previously unknown species called Pakudyptes hakataramea. Pakudyptes combines the Māori word "paku," meaning "small" with the Greek word "dyptes," meaning "diver," according to the researcher's study published Wednesday (July 31) in the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand. 

The newly described species plugs an important gap in penguin wing evolution because its shoulder joints are very similar to those of present-day penguins, while its elbow joints are very similar to extinct penguins.

"Pakudyptes is the first fossil penguin ever found with this combination, and it is the 'key' fossil to unlocking the evolution of penguin wings," study lead author Tatsuro Ando, a curator at Ashoro Museum of Paleontology in Japan, said in a statement. 

Related: Largest penguin ever discovered weighed a whopping 340 pounds, fossils reveal