Giant penguin the size of a human lived in New Zealand 66 million years ago alongside 'the world’s largest parrot, huge eagles and burrowing bats'

Fossilised remains of a huge penguin almost the size of an adult human have been found in New Zealand's South Island, scientists have announced.

The giant waddling sea bird stood 5.25 feet (1.6m) high and weighed 175 pounds (80kg), about four times heavier and 15 inches (40cm) taller than the modern Emperor penguin (3.93 ft / 1.2m), researchers said, according to the Daily Mail.

Named 'crossvallia waiparensis', it hunted off New Zealand's coast in the Paleocene era, 66 to 56 million years ago, adding to the list of extinct 'megafauna' that lived in the region at this time.

Many of them were marsupials - including giant kangaroos and wombats as well as other strange creatures like the marsupial lion - as well as huge snakes, lizards and birds. 

Among them was the 'world’s largest parrot, giant eagles, and burrowing bats' , experts say, that lived for around 11 million years when, within just a few thousand years, most of them disappeared.

There are several theories to explain this relatively sudden extinction, but the leading explanation is that changes in environmental and ecological factors and the start of the last ice age were responsible,