Scientists are planning to bring the extinct great auk back from the dead, almost 200 years after the penguin-sized, flightless birds disappeared.
A team of researchers met at the International Centre for Life in Newcastle to discuss reintroducing the flightless marine birds onto the Farne islands off the north-east coast of England.
Until the species’ final extinction in the middle of the 19th century, great auks ranged across the Atlantic from Northern Europe to Iceland, Canada and the US.
The size of a medium penguin, it lived in the open ocean except for when it waddled ashore for breeding.
Flightlessness made the birds vulnerable to human hunting and exploitation for its meat and feathers that reached industrial scale. Attempts to regulate the hunting as early as the 16th Century were fruitless.