The brown stains were penguin guano, or poop, the release said. The bird poop stood out from the surrounding ice and rock, leading researchers to identify a colony of emperor penguins.

Elephant seals once bred at Cape Hallett on the northern Ross Sea. They don’t even visit Antarctica anymore. Around 1,000 years ago, they disappeared due to climate change.

The world’s first penguin biologist to study a large colony of the animals up close, George Murray Levick, was marooned in 1911 for almost a year on Cape Adare in Antarctica ... encounter I had ...

Their population has dropped about 50% in the last half-century. They are classified as a "near threatened" species. Stock photo of an emperor penguin colony. Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket/Getty ...

The brown stains were penguin guano, or poop, the release said. The bird poop stood out from the surrounding ice and rock, leading researchers to identify a colony of emperor penguins.

The brown stains were penguin guano, or poop, the release said. The bird poop stood out from the surrounding ice and rock, leading researchers to identify a colony of emperor penguins.

The brown stains were penguin guano, or poop, the release said. The bird poop stood out from the surrounding ice and rock, leading researchers to identify a colony of emperor penguins.

The brown stains were penguin guano, or poop, the release said. The bird poop stood out from the surrounding ice and rock, leading researchers to identify a colony of emperor penguins.

The brown stains were penguin guano, or poop, the release said. The bird poop stood out from the surrounding ice and rock, leading researchers to identify a colony of emperor penguins.