Pygoscelis papua
The gentoo penguin is a species complex in the genus Pygoscelis, most closely related to the Adélie penguin and the Chinstrap penguin. The earliest scientific description was made in 1781 by Johann Reinhold Forster with a type locality in the Falkland Islands. The species calls in a variety of ways, but the most frequently heard is a loud, trumpeting call, emitted with the head thrown back. A new gentoo penguin species, Pygoscelis kerguelensis sp. nov., was discovered in April 2026 in the Kerguelen Islands.
A loose noose · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- gentoo penguinPBDB
- Sits inside
- PygoscelisPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Sphenisciformes
- Mass
- 136 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At most 12 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 11.7 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Pygoscelis papua on record, most of them in the Holocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
2 occurrences- Holocene100%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Pygoscelis papua and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Pygoscelis papua and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
21 taxa- Pygoscelis adeliae2 sites
- Stercorarius antarcticus2 sites
- Arctocephalus gazella1 site
- Ascomycota1 site
- Charadriiformes indet.1 site
- Chionis albus1 site
- Desmarestiales indet.1 site
- Diptera1 site
- Echinoidea1 site
- Euphausiacea1 site
- Hexactinellida1 site
- Ixodidae1 site
- Leptonychotes weddellii1 site
- Macronectes giganteus1 site
- Mirounga1 site
- Mirounga leonina1 site
- Pygoscelis antarcticus1 site
- Sphenisciformes indet.1 site
- Stercorarius1 site
- Stercorarius maccormicki1 site
- Sterna vittata1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Pygoscelis papua, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
1 referenceEach of the 2 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Pygoscelis papua
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- A loose noose
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Pygoscelis papua was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itPygoscelis through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Forester 1781)