A family of gentoo penguins. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons) Over the past 7,000 years, as mighty civilizations rose and crumbled, another saga was playing out in the southern reaches of the world. Just off the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, a colony of gentoo penguins have long made tiny Ardley Island their home. At times, the colony rose to a mighty power, holding absolute dominion over the mile-long strip of land their forefathers swam, waddled and slid their way to some time around 5,700 B.C. But, nature deals harshly with hubris, and the penguins were laid low by not one, but three volcanic eruptions. Despite this, they return.
It is only recently that researchers pieced together the tumultuous history of the Ardley Island penguins, some 10,000 of which currently inhabit the island. Unable to elicit much from the penguins themselves, a team of scientists led by researchers from the British Antarctic ...
