Scientists have discovered a massive penguin that would have been as tall as an adult.

The Crossvallia waiparensis would have been around 1.6m tall and weighed up to 70 to 80kg when it walked the earth between 66 and 56 million years ago during the Paleocene Epoch.

Amateur palaeontologist Leigh Love found the bones in the Waipara Greensand fossil site in North Canterbury in 2018.

Fossil preparator Al Mannering got them ready for study and the bones were analysed by Canterbury Museum curators Dr Paul Scofield and Dr Vanesa De Pietri, and Dr Gerald Mayr of Senckenberg Natural History Museum in Frankfurt, Germany.

The team published a paper about the discovery this week in Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology.