When not breeding, they spent their time foraging in the waters of the North Atlantic, ranging as far south as northern Spain and along the coastlines of Canada, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Norway, Ireland, and Great Britain. It bred on rocky, remote islands with easy access to the ocean and a plentiful food supply, a rarity in nature that provided only a few breeding sites for the great auks. It is not closely related to the birds now known as penguins, which were discovered later by Europeans and so named by sailors because of their physical resemblance to the great auk. It was the only modern species in the genus Pinguinus. The great auk ( Pinguinus impennis) is a species of flightless alcid that became extinct in the mid-19th century. Mataeoptera impennis (Linnaeus, 1758) Gloger, 1842.Chenalopex impennis (Linnaeus, 1758) Vieillot, 1818. ![]() ![]() ![]()
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