ANTARCTIC ZOOGEOGRAPHY 375 



groups, while others seem to spread over very large areas without ex- 

 hibiting geographic variation — contrasting states which impress us 

 with the nonconformity of nature. A sound classification of the birds 

 found between the roaring forties and the Antarctic Continent is still a 

 long way in the future. The mere fact that so much recent ornith- 

 ological writing has degenerated into a game of juggling locahties 

 and subspecific names should not, however, obscure the truth that 

 taxonomy must be worked out to its practical limit before we can 

 interpret the subtler points of distribution. Up to the present, no 

 single museum in the world possesses an even moderately good repre- 

 sentation of birds from the Antarctic and the sub-Antarctic islands 

 as a whole. If all existing collections were combined, they would still 

 be insufficient, especially since no specimens whatsoever are known 

 from the South Sandwich group, Bouvet Island, and other isolated 

 and important stations. 



Fossil Birds and Their Significance 



Little is known of the Antarctic Continent as an original center 

 of dispersal for some of the groups of birds which have undergone so 

 great a structural radiation in the southern oceans. It would be nat- 

 ural to infer that the penguins are of Antarctic or at least austral 

 origin; in favor of this view, indeed, we have paleontological support. 

 Fossil remains taken by the Swedish expedition at Seymour Island, 

 West Antarctica, were associated with bones of primitive whales 

 (zeuglodonts) and are assigned by Wiman*' to Eocene age. The Sey- 

 mour Island fossil penguins comprise not fewer than six forms, which 

 have all been generically distinguished. The largest was apparently 

 a much taller bird than the modern emperor penguin. Together with 

 four or five Patagonian middle or late Tertiary species and two New 

 Zealand species, these fossils bring the known number of extinct pen- 

 guins up to twelve or more. 



Wiman concludes that the early Tertiary penguins were nearer 

 the carinate stem of birds than the existing, more highly specialized 

 members of the order. He refers to the "walking" type of tarsomet- 

 atarsus characteristic of the fossil species, which suggests, remotely 

 perhaps, that the penguins may well have evolved from a tribe of 

 terrestrial birds, inhabitants of the Antarctic Continent during the 

 long period of mild climate indicated by the fossil vegetation. In 

 the absence of traces of mammalian enemies, we may think of the 

 ancestral penguins as flightless, somewhat "dodo-like" birds, which 

 took to the sea before the gradual progress of glaciation. The picture 

 is, of course, pure speculation, but for reasons of analogy it is by no 



^5 Carl Wiman: Die alttertiaren Vertebraten der Seyraourinsel (Wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse 

 der Schwedischen Sudpolar-Expedition 1901-1903, herausg. von Otto Nordenskjold, Vol. 3. Part I, 

 pp. 1-37), Stockholm, 1905. 



