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The accuracy of these dates for bird extinctions varies wildly between one entry and another. 15th century ... Great Auk [1] c. 1850 Black-fronted parakeet [1]
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". [ 72 ] Night of the Auk , a 1956 Broadway drama by Arch Oboler, depicts a group of astronauts returning from the Moon to discover that a full-blown nuclear war has broken out.
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 ...
The extinction of the Great Auk is a tragic reminder of how overexploitation can wipe out entire species. denisk0/istockphoto. 9. Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius)
' 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.
By 1800 the great auk was probably extinct on Funk Island, and by 1844, in the world. Naturalists and scientists had become interested in the plight of the great auk and by June 1841 a Norwegian naturalist, Dr. Peter Stuvitz visited Funk Island with the hope of obtaining specimens of the birds, but was forced to leave due to weather conditions ...
Pinguinus alfrednewtoni was the closest known relative of the great auk (P. impennis). Although P. alfrednewtoni had been considered a sister taxon to the more recent great auk since its description in the 70s, it and many other extinct auks had not been included in phylogenetic analysis until 2011.
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