Tom Gilbert, from the University of Copenhagen, said that his initial sequencing of the Great
Auk genome showed that its living relative, the razorbill, is even more closely related than previously thought.
Scientists are also close to reconstructing the
genomes of the dodo, the flightless bird that went extinct from Mauritius, its only home, in the late 1600s; and the great
auk, which lived in the North Atlantic before dying out in the mid-19th century.