Náttúrufræðingurinn

Volume

Náttúrufræðingurinn - 1995, Page 68

Náttúrufræðingurinn - 1995, Page 68
tions existed in Iceland. It wasn't until 1971 that Iceland procured a mounted Great Auk, when a specimen was bought at an auction at Sotheby's in London, l'or £ 9300 (cf. Bennett 1971 and Tinker 1971). The money was ob- tained in a public collection in only four days, clearly expressing the general interest of Ice- landers to acquire such a specimen, the only bird species known to have become extinct in Iceland. The specimen, which is Icelandic in origin, had been in the possession of its pro- curer, Danish Count Raben and his family, since 1821. The bird is mentioned by Grieve (1885), who says it is badly stuffed, but this is certainly not true, compared to the Great Auk's surviving relatives. A Great Auk egg and a composite skeleton has also been available in Iceland since 1954, when such items were bought from Harvard University, cf. Tomkinson & Tomkinson (1966). All these relics are kept at the Icelandic Institute of Natural History in Reykjavik. Skeletal remains of Great Auks have been found at four sites in Iceland, at Reykjavík, the Westman Islands, Hafnir, and Býjarsker (Newton 1861, Matthías Þórðarson 1944, Þorkell Grímsson 1974, Meldgaard 1988). Materials from the first two sites are deposited at the Icelandic Institute of Natural History in Reykjavík, and from the first one also some at the Zoological Museum in Copenhagen. Bengtson (1984) believed the decline of the Great Auk world population took place long before excessive exploitation by humans. He hypothesized that climatic change, direct or indirect, primarily brought about the popula- tion decline. Climate may have affected the population in past millennia but Great Auks were still pretty common at the advent of se- vere human persecution around 1500. The population is likely to have survived if such heavy human interference had not taken place. If climate was an influencing factor, the Great Auk may have been more common around the Settlement of Iceland in the 9th and lOth century AD. Climate was generally warmer then, but this changed at the beginning of the Little Ice Age at around 1300 (cf. Ogilvie 1984). The distribution of skeletal remains that have been unearthed so far in Iceland largely traces the distribution of known nesting sites in the south and southwestern parts. Future studies of middens will undoubtedly increase our knowledge of the life history of Great Auks in Iceland. The Breiðafjörður skerries, West-Iceland, are most likely to have sup- ported breeding Great Auks at the time of the Settlement. If so it is hypothesized that the birds were exterminated by the locals shortly after the islands were settled. The expertise of identifying bones of wild animals has been greatly lacking in Iceland. Sucli materials from archaeological excava- tions have thus not received the attention of Icelandic scholars it deserves. In recent years the American zooarchaeologists McGovern and Amorosi have studied a number of bone collections and greatly increased our knowl- edge in this field (cf. Amorosi 1989, 1991, Amorosi et al. 1994). Yet, the bone collections studied so far have failed to unveil Great Auk bones. This is possibly because rather few places have been studied, with fewer still of these in coastal areas. Usually the bone depos- its studied have not been old enough (from be- fore 1200) and sometimes soil conditions do not favour preservation. PÓSTFANG HÖFUNDAR/AuTHOR'S ADDRESS Ævar Petersen Náttúrufræðistofnun Islands/ Icelandic Institute of Natural History Pósthólf/Box 5320 IS-125 REYKJAVÍK Iceland NeTFANG/E-MAIL aevar@nattfs.is 66
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