Icadyptes

Icadyptes is an extinct genus of giant penguin from the Late Eocene of South America, roughly 37 to 34 million years ago, known from fossils found in the Otuma Formation on the coastal desert of southern Peru. It stood about 1.5 meters tall, comparable to other giant fossil penguins such as Anthropornis and Palaeeudyptes, and had an unusually long, spear-like beak resembling that of a heron, a shape researchers consider ancestral for all modern penguins. Its discovery in tropical Peru was significant because it showed penguins had adapted to warm climates roughly 30 million years earlier than the previously accepted view that penguins evolved near the poles and later spread toward the equator.