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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. [100] The great auk has been identified as a good candidate for de-extinction by Revive and Restore, a non-profit organization.
He associates the great auk with the mythical roc as a method of formally returning the main character to a sleepy land of fantasy and memory. [72] W. S. Merwin mentions the great auk in a short litany of extinct animals in his poem "For a Coming Extinction", one of the poems from his 1967 collection, "The Lice". [73]
' Great Auk Stack '), [2] or Freykja (), [citation needed] is a small, uninhabited island in the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago. [1] [2] Geirfuglasker is located approximately 30 kilometres (19 mi) off Iceland's southwestern coast. [1] [2] The island hosted one of the last known colony of great auks, which thrived given its inaccessibility to humans.
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.”
The rough surf around the island usually made it inaccessible to humans, and one of the last refuges for the flightless bird the great auk (which was also called "garefowl" — "geirfugl" in Icelandic). In a volcanic eruption in 1830 this rock submerged. The surviving great auks moved to a nearby island called Eldey and were wiped out by humans ...
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.
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 ...
Saying "the Great auk is extinct" is a correct statement, sure, and saying "the Great auk was extinct" is incorrect, since it's still extinct (one supposes). But saying "the Great auk is a flightless bird " is odd in a realist sense since, well, there is no Great auk, at least not a living one.