By Laura
Geggel, Senior Writer | September 10, 2018 03:21pm ET
The
bodies of hundreds of mummified penguins in Antarctica aren't a sign of an
ancient illness that swept through the icy continent, nor are they the remains
of a penguin massacre by a ravenous predator.
Rather,
these penguins,
who were mummified by the cold, dry Antarctica environment, likely died from
weather on the opposite end of the spectrum: two extremely rainy and snowy
events that happened over the past 1,000 years, a new study finds.
"It
is quite likely that global climate warming caused enhanced precipitation,
which led to the tragedy," said study lead researcher Liguang Sun, a
professor of Earth science at the Institute of Polar Environment at the
University of Science and Technology of China. [Charming
Chick Photos: Antarctica's Baby Penguins]
The
research team stumbled across the remains of the "preserved, dehydrated
mummies," many of them chicks, in East Antarctica's Long Peninsula in
2016.
It's
actually common to find the remains of dead Adélie
penguins(Pygoscelis adeliae),
including their feathers and bones, in Antarctica, Sun said. "But it is
very rare to find so many mummified penguins, especially mummified
chicks," Sun told Live Science in an email.
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