Extinction Archives

Great Auk

Extinct | 1844

Pinguinus impennis

Charadriiformes - Alcidae - Pinguinus

The Great Auk, a flightless seabird, was once widespread in the waters and islands of the North Atlantic. It was the only flightless species among modern auk family. The Great Auk and the extant Razorbill are evolutionary relatives. They both belonged to a lineage that originated in the Atlantic Ocean. They likely diverged during or after the Pliocene, each developing traits suited to the cold, nutrient-rich waters of the North Atlantic. During this time, the great auk lost its ability to fly1.

The Great Auk measured about 75 to 80 centimeters in length, making it the largest modern species in the auk family2. Males and females looked alike, with black backs, white bellies, and heads and necks tinged with brown. They had small heads and streamlined bodies. The Great Auk’s plumage and body shape were remarkably similar to those of penguins, despite being unrelated, a prime example of convergent evolution. It had a hard, long beak with white grooves arranged diagonally, and oval white patches in front of its eyes. During the winter molt, its throat feathers turned white and the eye patches became thinner and lighter3. The Great Auk’s wings were short and highly reduced, darker than its body, and brown in color. Its feet were webbed and black.

Although clumsy on land, the Great Auk was an adept swimmer and diver. It inhabited the high-latitude waters of the North Atlantic, spending most of the year at sea, diving to catch fish. The Great Auk only came ashore to breed in the summer. They did not build nests; instead, they laid eggs directly on rocks, typically at the base of coastal cliffs. The Great Auk had specific breeding requirements, usually preferring isolated North Atlantic islands far from the mainland, with rocky shores suitable for laying eggs and accessing the sea. During the breeding season, they were highly social, with each pair producing one egg per season.

Humans have hunted the Great Auk for a very long time; indigenous peoples hunted them over a hundred thousand years ago. However, their decline towards extinction truly began during the Age of Exploration. Increased human activity in the North Atlantic and systematic commercial slaughter expanded. The Great Auk was hunted extensively for its meat, oil, feathers, and eggs. As their population declined, collectors’ demand for their skins and eggs increased, leading to intensified hunting.

By the late 18th century, the Great Auk had disappeared from breeding sites on the North American side of the Atlantic, and those in European waters gradually vanished too. The last groups migrated to remote islands near Iceland, where they were eventually hunted to extinction by humans in the mid-19th century.

The last confirmed sighting of a Great Auk was on June 3, 1844, on Eldey Island, Iceland, where three men killed a pair of Great Auks 4 incubating an egg for a bounty5.

Great Auk, drawn by John James Audubon (1785-1851), Public Domain

  1. Moum T, Arnason U, Árnason E. 2002. Mitochondrial DNA Sequence Evolution and Phylogeny of the Atlantic Alcidae, Including the Extinct Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis). Molecular Biology and Evolution. 19(9):1434–1439. doi:https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.molbev.a004206. The Razorbill is the only extant species of the genus, but recent fossil research has discovered more species from the Pliocene. See: Smith NA, Clarke JA. 2011. An Alphataxonomic Revision of Extinct and Extant Razorbills (Aves, Alcidae): A Combined Morphometric and Phylogenetic Approach. Ornithological Monographs. 72(1):1–61. doi:https://doi.org/10.1525/om.2011.72.1.1. Pliocene fossils also revealed another species of the genus Pinguinus, distributed on the western Atlantic coast, which went extinct in ancient times, named Pinguinus alfrednewtoni. It is generally believed that they and the Great Auk were sister species that diverged due to geographic isolation. After Pinguinus alfrednewtoni’s extinction, the Great Auk, originally distributed on the eastern Atlantic coast, migrated across the sea to occupy similar ecological niches on the west coast. See: Ray CE, Bohaska DJ. 2001. Geology and Paleontology of the Lee Creek Mine, North Carolina, III. p279. ↩︎

  2. Another ancient relative of the Great Auk mentioned in [1] was slightly larger than the Great Auk. ↩︎

  3. Most specimens and illustrations are based on the Great Auk in summer, depicting their oval “eye patches” (actually in front of the eyes). This is because Great Auks lived at sea in winter and only came ashore to breed in summer, giving humans the opportunity to encounter (and hunt them to extinction). Winter specimens are rare. In the winter of 1815, a Great Auk was killed in the sea off Fiskenaesset (now Qeqertarsuatsiaat) in Danish Greenland, and its taxidermied specimen is preserved in the Natural History Museum of Copenhagen. The illustrations on this page reference: Kjartansdóttir K. 2019. The changing symbolic meaning of the extinct great auk and its afterlife as a museum object at the Natural History Museum of Denmark. Nordisk Museologi. 26(2):41–56. doi:https://doi.org/10.5617/nm.7476. Photographs of the same specimen by Geert Brovad can also be found in Meldgaard M. 1988. The Great Auk, Pinguinus impennis (L.) in Greenland. Historical Biology. 1(2):145–178. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/08912968809386472. and Morten Meldgaard. 2004. Ancient harp seal hunters of Disko Bay (Vol. 330): Subsistence and settlement at the Saqqaq culture site Qeqertasussuk (2400-1400 BC), West Greenland. Museum Tusculanum Press. ↩︎

  4. The skins and internal organs of the two Great Auks were sent to Denmark, but the skins were later lost. Scientists confirmed through DNA analysis of the organs that the skin of the last male Great Auk is preserved in a specimen at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences. See: Thomas JE, Carvalho GR, Haile J, Martin MD, Samaniego Castruita JA, Niemann J, Sinding M-HS, Sandoval-Velasco M, Rawlence NJ, Fuller E, et al. 2017. An ‘Aukward’ Tale: A Genetic Approach to Discover the Whereabouts of the Last Great Auks. Genes. 8(6). doi:https://doi.org/10.3390/genes8060164. The whereabouts of the female skin remain unknown. Researchers speculate that the skin of a Great Auk purchased by the Cincinnati Museum from a London dealer in the 20th century may belong to the female killed in 1844. The Cincinnati Museum stated in a 2020 publication that the same research team requested Great Auk tissue for DNA sequencing, and they complied. As of 2024, I have not found the results of this sequencing. See here. ↩︎

  5. The bounty was offered by Icelandic merchant Carl Franz Siemsen, an agent for several museums. ↩︎

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