The Great Auk is large and
flightless seabird, it was also known as a penguin and garefowl and was hunted to extinction for its oil, feathers and eggs. The seabird was a familiar sight to sailors and
islanders in the North Atlantic until the mid
1800s. In Scotland ,
the last one was thought to have been caught and killed on the remote island
archipelago of St Kilda. According to the National Trust for Scotland (the
owners of St Kilda), it occasionally visited the island group. Scots writer Martin. Martin wrote of seeing the bird there in his book A Late Voyage to St Kilda
1698 referring to the bird as a Witch.
St. Kilda boast
the last recorded sighting of a Great Auk in the British
Isles .
It was made in 1840,
when islanders on Stac an Armin suspected it was a witch and the cause of a
tremendous storm. The last breeding
pair are believed to have been spotted (and promptly killed) in 1844 by sailors on a rocky outcrop on
the island of Eldey
off Iceland . And the last
recorded sighting was in Newfoundland , Canada , in
1852.
Pioneering ornithologist Dr. Eagle Clark (1912) refers to a statement in Baikie and Hedle's Historia Naturis Orcadensis (1848) that one was seen off Fair Isle in June 1798. The Great Auk was still known to breed at Papa Westray, about 40 miles away at the time. I can not find this book but would like to see if it has any other Fair Isle bird info?
More great Great Auk info & History: http://www.messybeast.com/extinct/great-auk.htm
a bit of the Science publish in the Oxford Journals: http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/9/1434.full
Fig. 1.—Organization
and sequence characteristics of great auk mtDNA. a, Schematic representation of a 4,258-bp
mtDNA region in great auk. The length of each gene is indicated, and lengths of
the intergenic spacers are given below the gene junctions. For designation of
tRNAs the corresponding three-letter amino acid code is used. A representation
of the control region with conserved boxes F, D, C, and conserved sequence
block I (CSB I) is given below. The heteroplasmic tandem repeat (HTR) region
and a possible TAS are indicated. b, Multiple sequence alignment of the 3′
end of the control region showing the position and sequence motifs of HTRs in CR
III of six alcid species. Dashes represent gaps. HTR sequence motifs are shown
in brackets, and n designates the variable number of
repeats found within single individuals, a condition known as heteroplasmy. The
3′ end of the CR is indicated
Since
2002 Scientists at the Royal
Ontario Museum
have been slowly but successfully piecing together the genetic blueprint of the
Great Auk from the scattered remains of a bird whose extinction at the hand of
man in the first half of the 19th century has made it the tragic figure of
Canadian nature.
In a
project aimed at tracing the Great Auk's evolutionary history and establishing
its relationship to several living species of birds, the researchers are also
taking the first steps toward a tantalizing possibility: the complete mapping
of an extinct animal's genome and its resurrection through cloning
Razorbill parents of a cloned Great Auk chick. |
As a human I have always been ashamed of this type of mass extinction.
I wish that I could say the Great Auk flies again! even though it never could...
If you have not figured it out yet...
April Fools!
The above links I found by google and are real as far as I know?
Dr. April J. First says cloning gone wild will have to wait a few years...
If you have not figured it out yet...
April Fools!
The above links I found by google and are real as far as I know?
Dr. April J. First says cloning gone wild will have to wait a few years...
Happy April the first
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Sounds like a tall story to me - could it be 1st April today?
ReplyDeleteI so wish it could be true. One day, perhaps.
ReplyDeleteAll that cloning for nothing! Great Auk alive on remote island of the Faeroe's...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.express.co.uk/blogs/post/268/blog/2012/04/01/311750/No-kidding-the-great-auk-lives
I saw one of these a couple of years ago... http://www.birdforum.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=250997&d=1270083638
ReplyDeletei feel bad that its extinct when i was looking in the dictonary it talked about the great auk.i thought it would really work.
ReplyDeleteI hate you.
ReplyDeletethe great auk is cthe auks are so cute1
ReplyDeleteyou like auks well then when we clone mammoths and auks i will try to find them i love them
ReplyDeleteand thylacines are rediscovered theres sightings!
Well, I'll be buggered, got to the April bit, --what a let down
ReplyDeleteI have know that farne island has a mass population of great auks just discovered
ReplyDeletethis guy is true ive been there and seen them
Deletegreat auks are the best of the seabirds!
ReplyDeleteAwwwww... k
ReplyDeleteI had a feeling of hope which then turned to sadness and then thought soon I will have this same sadness about many other familiar creatures if we don't change our ways soon.
ReplyDeleteSo maybe this joke will help prompt some people to action at least in the small ways that they are able to act.
This looks like an authentic great auk sighting. Doesn't appear to be a fake or photoshopped.
ReplyDeletehttp://1.bp.blogspot.com/-owdDPFPStJU/TZUJem5HwAI/AAAAAAAABN0/crk0ghxsukQ/s1600/Great+Auk+Inner+Farne.jpg
In my opinion I think this is very bad taste. It's a disgrace to our species that we subjected this beautiful bird to countless horrors and ultimately extinction. To then make it the subject of an April Fools is deplorable.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you; that bird was favored and was a spiritual bird to my tribe; I was really hoping that it was true and succesful with even a clone. For that person to makeup a joke, is more than distasteful but a complete piece of garbage
Deletei hope scientists can successfully clone the auks, and other extinct animals too! that would be so rad!
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