Two preserved great auk specimens displayed at a museum in 1971. The last pair of great auks were killed in 1844.

The great auk could reach 30 inches from tip to tail and lived along the rocky shorelines of the icy North Atlantic. It looked a lot like a penguin. In fact, ...

Quirks and Quarks17:24How documenting the disappearance of the great auk led to the discovery of extinction When species cease to exist, we often say they went "the way of the dodo." But it might ...

The Great auk, John Gerrard Keulemans/Public domain/WikimediaCommons. DNA research has recently established that the stuffed bird in The Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels is, in ...

The great auk, a puffin relative, was a flightless seabird found along the coasts of North America and western Europe. They were large birds, weighing up to 11 pounds with large fat deposits.

IMAGINATION has long had a large share in the accounts given of the Gare-fowl or Great Auk, notwithstanding the efforts of those who have tried to set forth nothing but the truth on the subject ...

IN 1858, John Wolley and Alfred Newton, two British scientists, travelled to Iceland to study the great auk, a large, flightless seabird. They hoped to observe the bird in its natural habitat and ...

The great auk was hunted in the Scottish Isles, Norway, Iceland and some other places — but the major slaughterhouse of the great auks was in Newfoundland. It was European sailors, French and ...

Gísli Pálsson: The great auk was a tall bird — 80 centimeters [31 inches] and quite thick with lots of meat — and it was flightless so would nest on skerries [small rocky islands] where it ...