Great auk (Pen Gwyn in Welsh), or, because the great auk had such large white circles on its head. When European explorers discovered what today are known as penguins in the Southern Hemisphere, they noticed their similar appearance to the great auk and named them after this bird, although biologically, they are not closely related. Whalers also lumped the northern and southern birds together under the common name "woggins". Standing about tall and weighing approximately as adult birds, the flightless great auk was the second-largest member of both its family and the order Charadriiformes, surpassed only by the mancalline "Miomancalla". The great
Hesperornithes to that in Neognathae, are today considered to be due to convergent evolution. In 2015, a species-level phylogenetic analysis found the following relationships among hesperornithiforms. Hesperornithes Hesperornithes is an extinct and highly specialized group of aquatic avialans closely related to the ancestors of modern birds. They inhabited both marine and freshwater habitats in the Northern Hemisphere, and include genera such as "Hesperornis", "Parahesperornis", "Baptornis", "Enaliornis", and "Potamornis", all strong-swimming, predatory divers. Many of the species most specialized for swimming were completely flightless. The largest known hesperornithean, "Canadaga arctica", may have reached a maximum adult length of over . Hesperornitheans were