Great auks (Pinguinus impennis) were large flightless birds that thrived on rocky islands in the North Atlantic for thousands of years. However, humans hunted them to extinction within just a few ...

In June 1844, farmers Jón Brandsson and Sigurður Ísleifsson, along with 12 others, made the perilous journey by boat from Iceland to the island of Eldey. They were searching for great auks: black and ...

This bland history by Pálsson (Down to Earth), an anthropology professor emeritus at the University of Iceland, traces how British naturalists John Wolley and Alfred Newton’s 1858 expedition to ...

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 ...

Tim Birkhead, a British ornithologist, introduced me to the extremely ancient and flightless sea bird, Auk, that made a living in the North Atlantic for millennia. Birkhead, who has written several ...

The whereabouts of the skin of the last female great auk, which has puzzled experts for 180 years, has been confirmed, according to a study. Sandra Toombs Image first published in Explorers Journal ...

During summers of my college years, I was a counselor at Camp Keewaydin near Middlebury, Vt., where pranks were attributed to the “Great Auk.” For instance, some of us, under cover of dark, rolled a ...