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The great auk went extinct in the 1800s due to overhunting by humans for food. The last two known great auks lived on an island near Iceland and were clubbed to death by sailors. There have been no known sightings since. [95] The great auk has been identified as a good candidate for de-extinction by Revive and Restore, a non-profit organization.
The last colony of great auks lived on Geirfuglasker (the "Great Auk Rock") off Iceland. This islet was a volcanic rock surrounded by cliffs that made it inaccessible to humans, but in 1830, the islet submerged after a volcanic eruption, and the birds moved to the nearby island of Eldey , which was accessible from a single side.
Pinguinus alfrednewtoni is an extinct species of auk related to the great auk known from fossils that were discovered in the Pliocene Yorktown Formation of North Carolina.Like the great auk, it was a large flightless diving bird that used its wings to propel itself forward underwater.
The great auk was a large flightless bird that lived in the Northern Hemisphere. It had a large, intricately grooved beak. When the first settlers arrived in Iceland, the auk population was probably in the millions. However, the settlers found the auks to be “very good and nourishing meat.”
Birds portal; Great auk is part of WikiProject Birds, an attempt at creating a standardized, informative and easy-to-use ornithological resource.If you would like to participate, visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.
The Great Auk. Southborough, Kent: Errol Fuller. ISBN 0-9533553-0-6. The book of more than 450 pages is entirely devoted to the extinct great auk (Pinguinus impennis). It holds, apart from detailed descriptions of the history, ecology, habits and distribution of the "garefowl" (an old English name), a great many illustrations – often dating ...
There are many species that have gone extinct as a direct result of human activity. Some examples include the dodo, the great auk, the Tasmanian tiger, the Chinese river dolphin, and the passenger pigeon. An extinct species can be revived by using allelic replacement [36] of a closely related species that is still living.
Eldey, and the fate of the great auk, are mentioned in The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby by Charles Kingsley. Eldey is described in detail in The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert. The Great Auk, a novel by Allan W. Eckert, c. 1963, Library of Congress Cat.#63-18215