Great auk

Great Auks. John Gerrard Keulemans (1842-1912)

This large, flightless relative of penguins inhabited the Atlantic Ocean, from Florida to Greenland, Iceland, Scandinavia, the British Isles, Western Europe and Morocco. It was hunted for its plumage, its eggs and even its meat, used by sailors. It was declared extinct in 1852.

Great Auk (Alca impennis), a stuffed specimen preserved at the Icelandic Institute of Natural History. The bird was collected off the south coast of Iceland in 1821 shortly before the species became extinct in 1844. The last ever Great Auk site, Eldey island, forms the background og the photo. The egg is a mimmic.

The great auk could return to British shores for the first time in almost 200 years after geneticists hatched a plan to bring the extinct bird back from the dead.

Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis) flightless sea bird. Habitat: rocky and isolated islands. Funk islands was the largest breeding colony. Estimated to have had a maximum population in the millions. Extermination began with a slaughter for food and eggs by local inhabitants, but its fate was sealed when feather became fashion. The last colony of Great Auks is believed to be lived on Geirfuglasker (the "Great Auk Rock") off Iceland. THIS SPECIES IS EXTINCT.

Great auk - Google Arts & Culture

A gallery showing the MacGillivray art collection

When you picture a penguin, you probably imagine a waddling black-and-white bird slipping along the ice in Antarctica, right? But here’s a twist that might surprise you: the birds we call “penguins” today are actually not true penguins at all! The name we associate with these loveable little birds was borrowed from an entirely different species—the Great Auk—that’s been extinct for over a century.

Great auks by Ida Kalsta on ArtStation.

Prized for their meat, oil, and feathers, great auks were slowly killed off until only one remained in the wild.

the great auk can ate the fish

A memorial to a giant seabird that was hunted to extinction.

The great auk (Pinguinus impennis) is a species of flightless alcid that became extinct in the mid-19th century. It was the only modern species in the genus Pinguinus. It is unrelated to the birds now known as penguins, which were discovered later and so named by sailors because of their physical resemblance to the great auk. - wikipedia #Extinct_Animals

Julian Friers | 'Great Auks by Fairhead on the Northern Irish coast' | Once a common bird of the North Atlantic, it was driven to extinction in the mid nineteenth century

great auk | The "Great Auk" by John A. Ruthven

George Edwards 1743 Heron, Crane, Pelican, Penguin Prints

One hundred and seventy-three years ago, the last two Great Auks, Pinguinus impennis, ever reliably seen were killed. Their internal organs can be found in the collections of the Natural History Museum of Denmark, but the location of their skins has remained a mystery. In 1999, Great Auk expert Errol Fuller proposed a list of five potential candidate skins in museums around the world. Here we take a palaeogenomic approach to test which—if any—of Fuller’s candidate skins likely belong to…

New research finds that the extinction of this flightless bird was completely our fault.