A long-lost penguin has finally returned home after more than six decades of mystery.
A homecoming celebration for the rediscovered emperor penguin will take place this Easter weekend at Dundee University’s D’Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum.
The penguin will be introduced to the public, who will be given the chance to help name it.
However, the task will be tricky as the bird’s gender is as much a mystery as where it has been for so many years.
In the past the penguin took pride of place in the original museum, established by Thompson, Dundee’s first professor of biology, and photographs show it was in good condition around 1900.
However, despite surviving the demolition of the old museum in the 1950s, the penguin specimen was misplaced during the intervening decades and appears to have been on quite a journey.
By the 1970s the penguin had been adopted by the biology society as its unofficial mascot and was reputed to regularly be seen propping up the bar at one of the students’ regular drinking dens.
But the party years were to take their toll on the penguin and it was packed off to be restored, only to be forgotten about until being found at the McManus: Dundee’s Art Gallery and Museum earlier this year.
Matthew Jarron, curator of museum services at the university, said: “Stories have been told about the penguin accompanying students on nights out and, inevitably, its condition deteriorated.
“At some point in the 1980s the penguin was sent to the old natural history museum at Barrack Street for treatment.
“Somehow it was then lost for some 30 years until its rediscovery in what is now the McManus Collections Unit earlier this year.
“We have finally been able to have the planned conservation work carried out and our penguin is looking as good as new in its new home in the D’Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum.
“We’re really grateful to our colleagues in the McManus Collections Unit for their help in restoring our penguin to us.”
Visitors to the museum this weekend will have the chance to name the penguin by entering their favourite into a suggestion box set up beside it.