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Great Auk

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Birds

                    iGreat Auk
   Great Auk by GE Lodge
   Great Auk by GE Lodge

                             Conservation status

   Extinct  (c. 1844)
            Scientific classification

   Kingdom: Animalia
   Phylum:  Chordata
   Class:   Aves
   Order:   Charadriiformes
   Family:  Alcidae
   Genus:   Pinguinus
            Bonnaterre, 1791
   Species: P. impennis

                                Binomial name

   Pinguinus impennis
   (Linnaeus, 1758)

   The Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis) is an extinct bird. It was the only
   species in the genus Pinguinus, flightless giant auks from the
   Atlantic, to survive until recent times, but is extinct today. It was
   also known as garefowl (from the Old Norse geirfugl), or penguin (see
   etymology below).

   In the past, the Great Auk was found in great numbers on islands off
   eastern Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Ireland and Great Britain,
   but it was eventually hunted to extinction. Remains found in Floridan
   middens suggest that at least occasionally, birds ventured that far
   south in winter, possibly as recently as in the 17th century (Weigel,
   1958).

Characteristics

   Mounted specimen, Natural History Museum, London
   Enlarge
   Mounted specimen, Natural History Museum, London

   Standing about 75 centimetres or 30-34 inches high and weighing around
   5 kg (Livezey, 1988), the flightless Great Auk was the largest of the
   auks. It had white and glossy black feathers. The longest wing feathers
   were only 4 inches long. Its feet and claws were black. The webbed skin
   between the toes was brown/black. The beak was black with white
   transverse grooves. There was an area of white feathers on both sides
   of the head between the beak and each eye. It had a reddish/brown iris.
   Juvenile birds had less prominent grooves in their beaks and had
   mottled white and black necks.

Ecology

   They were excellent swimmers, using their wings to swim underwater.
   Their main food was fish, usually between 12 and 20 cm, but
   occasionally up to half the bird's own length; based on remains
   associated with Great Auk bones on Funk Island and ecological and
   morphological considerations, it seems that Atlantic menhaden and
   capelin were favored prey items (Olson et al., 1979). Great Auks walked
   slowly and sometimes used their wings to help them traverse rough
   terrain. They had few natural predators, mainly large marine mammals
   and birds of prey, and had no innate fear of humans. Their
   flightlessness and awkwardness on land compounded their vulnerability
   to humans, who hunted them for food, feathers, and also for specimen
   collection for museums and private collections.
   Egg, Ipswich Museum, Suffolk
   Enlarge
   Egg, Ipswich Museum, Suffolk

   The Great Auk laid only one egg each year, which it incubated on bare
   ground, with hatching in June. The eggs were yellowish white to light
   ochre with a varying pattern of black, brown or greyish spots and lines
   which often congregated on the large end, and quite large (110-140 x
   70-84 mm).

Extinction

   The Great Auk was hunted on a significant scale for food, eggs and down
   from at least the 8th century. Previous to that, hunting by local
   natives can be documented from Late Stone Age Scandinavia and Eastern
   North America (Greenway, 1967), and from early 5th century AD Labrador
   (Jordan & Olson, 1982) where the bird only seems to have occurred as a
   straggler. A person buried at the Maritime Archaic site at Port au
   Choix, Newfoundland, dating to about 2000 BC, seems to have been
   interred clothed in a suit made from more than 200 Great Auk skins,
   with the heads left attached as decoration (Tuck, 1976). Nonetheless,
   opportunistic hunting by natives did not endanger the species as a
   whole.

   The little ice age may have reduced their numbers, but massive
   exploitation for their down eventually reduced the population to very
   few birds. Specimens of the Great Auk and its eggs became collectable
   and highly prized, and collecting contributed to the demise of the
   species. Today about 80 preserved skins and approximately 70 eggs are
   known to exist. The last pair, found incubating an egg, were killed on
   3 July 1844, on the island of Eldey off Iceland, though a later
   sighting was claimed of a live individual in 1852 off the Newfoundland
   Banks in Canada.

   Today, around 75 eggs of the Great Auk remain in museum collections,
   and about again this number of skins. While literally thousands of
   isolated bones have been collected from 19th century Funk Island to
   neolithic middens, only a minute number of complete skeletons exist
   (Luther, 1996).

Systematics

   Analysis of mtDNA sequences (Moum et al, 2002) have confirmed
   morphological and biogeographical studies in regarding the razorbill as
   the Great Auk's closest living relative. Interestingly, they were also
   closely related to the dovekie, which underwent a radically different
   evolution compared to Pinguinus. The entire lineage seems to have
   evolved in the North Atlantic. Due to the outward similarity to the
   razorbill (apart from flightlessness and size), the Great Auk was often
   placed in the genus Alca.

   However, the fossil record (Pinguinus alfrednewtoni from the Early
   Pliocene Yorktown Formation of the Lee Creek Mine, USA) and molecular
   evidence demonstrate that the three genera, while still closely
   related, diverged soon after their common ancestor had spread to the
   coasts of the Atlantic.

Etymology

   One theory connects names for the Great Auk with the origin of the word
   penguin, which may have come from the Welsh or Breton phrase pen gwyn,
   meaning "white head", referring originally to the Great Auk (although
   the head of the Great Auk was not in fact white, there are two white
   patches on its face). Later, when explorers discovered apparently
   similar birds in the southern hemisphere, what we now call penguins,
   the term was supposedly transferred to them. An alternative theory,
   suggested by John Latham in 1785, claims that the word penguin comes
   from the Latin pinguis meaning "fat", referring to the plump appearance
   of the bird.

   The binomial impennis means "lacking remiges" in Latin; the remiges of
   this species are compact and small and possibly worked as vortex
   generators, if the had any function at all.

Trivia

   The Great Auk is mascot to only one high school in the United States,
   Archmere Academy. It is also the mascot of Sir Sandford Fleming college
   in Ontario, Canada.
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Auk"
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   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
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