Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig ark.org. NS
Answer
ark.org. 5 NS ns-515.awsdns-00.net.
ark.org. 5 NS ns-1361.awsdns-42.org.
ark.org. 5 NS ns-1706.awsdns-21.co.uk.
ark.org. 5 NS ns-417.awsdns-52.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
ns-417.awsdns-52.com. 5 A 205.251.193.161
ns-515.awsdns-00.net. 5 A 205.251.194.3
ns-1706.awsdns-21.co.uk. 5 A 205.251.198.170
ns-417.awsdns-52.com. 5 AAAA 2600:9000:5301:a100:0:0:0:1
ns-515.awsdns-00.net. 5 AAAA 2600:9000:5302:300:0:0:0:1
ns-1361.awsdns-42.org. 5 AAAA 2600:9000:5305:5100:0:0:0:1
ns-1706.awsdns-21.co.uk. 5 AAAA 2600:9000:5306:aa00:0:0:0:1
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0