BBC reports:

"Valuable clues to the pace of evolution have been found in the bones of long-dead penguins recovered from the Antarctic.

DNA samples from these bones, one almost 8,000 years old, have given researchers in New Zealand a better idea of the speed of the "molecular clock" scientists use to investigate the evolutionary history of animals.

...The DNA they extracted from these remains indicated the molecular clock was ticking two to seven times faster than previously thought."