Charles Darwin and Carl Linnaeus assumed that extinction was either impossible or something that took place over millennia. They had not considered that human activities could reduce and obliterate a ...

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

The great auk had long provided humans with a source of meat and eggs. But from around 1500, hunting dramatically intensified when Europeans discovered the rich fishing grounds of Newfoundland.

Even though the dodo is the poster bird for human-driven extinction, the great auk stands as a better warning for the dangers of careless hunting.

The discovery of the great auk in Wyoming is consoling but puzzling. How a diving bird, whose habitat before it was supposed to perish off the face of the earth, about the middle of the last ...

Tim Birkhead, Kaliane Bradley and Mark Nowers discuss our fascination with the Great Auk and Victorian explorers, and efforts to help turtle doves, with Tom Sutcliffe. Show more The Great Auk: Its ...

In celebration of The Tragic Tale of the Great Auk, we bring you four more little-known facts about the once thriving Atlantic bird.

A version of this story ran in 2018; it has been updated for 2025. This article was originally published on mentalfloss.com as The Bizarre Story of Britain’s Last Great Auk.

The last Great Auk died in the mid-19th century, and new research shows they weren't in natural decline, so their extinction was entirely a result of human over-exploitation.

There is the great auk from the Outer Hebrides, and the ivory-billed woodpecker, the "Lord God Bird", from the American South.

Birding: These birds have vanished since Maine became a state Over the past 200 years, species such as the great auk, the Labrador duck and the passenger pigeon have become extinct.