Tim Birkhead on great auks and their extraordinary story of evolution, exploitation and de-extinction across the years ...

Pictured below is the last remaining specimen of a British great auk, a flightless seabird driven to extinction in the nineteenth century. It is a lesson in what can happen to an ocean-dwelling ...

The great auk was hunted in the Scottish Isles ... in the 16th and 17th centuries. They would hunt great auks in their thousands, decimating the local stock. At the same time, they would kill ...