Giant penguin hoax

In 1948, several people reported finding large, three-toed animal tracks at Clearwater Beach in Florida.[2] Later, more tracks were found along the shore of Suwannee River,[4] 40 miles (64 kilometers) from the ocean.

Later that year, a giant penguin was allegedly sighted at a distance.[2] The huge bird was described as 15 feet (4.6 meters) tall, and having alligator-like feet. During this same period, people in a boat off the Florida gulf coast reported seeing a huge penguin-like bird floating on the water.[5] These incidents were reported in several newspapers.[6] Later that year, another huge, penguin-like bird was allegedly seen from an airplane on the banks of the Suwannee River in northern Florida.[5][2] Cryptozoologist Ivan T. Sanderson declared that the creature was a giant penguin[7][4] that had somehow been driven away from its natural habitat.[1]

On April 11, 1988, St. Petersburg Times reporter Jan Kirby revealed[8] that the penguin hoax had been perpetrated by Tony Signorini and Al Williams, a locally known prankster who died in 1969.[1] Signorini stated they had been inspired by a photograph of fossilized dinosaur tracks and showed the reporter the huge penguin feet made of iron used in creating the tracks.[8][2]

There were numerous prehistoric species of gigantic penguins (such as Pachydyptes ponderosus and Anthropornis nordenskjoeldi; see also Palaeeudyptinae). However, actual prehistoric megafaunal birds only occurred in South Pacific and Cape Horn ocean waters. This is known from fossil remains. All such lineages certainly became extinct some 37 to 60 million years ago at the latest: so they were never encountered alive by humans and were barely contemporaries of the earliest hominids.[3]

Giant penguins based on the fossil finds also appear in Jules Verne's novel Journey to the Center of the Earth, and in At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft. In Lovecraft's novella, they are found in a fictitious Antarctic underground setting, and the author attempted a plausible evolutionary explanation for the creatures.