scholarly journals The dilemma of trade samples and the importance of museum vouchers—caveats from a study on the extinction of Steller's sea cow: a comment on Crerar et al. (2014)

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 20150149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas D. Pyenson ◽  
James F. Parham ◽  
Jorge Velez-Juarbe
Keyword(s):  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fedor S. Sharko ◽  
Eugenia S. Boulygina ◽  
Svetlana V. Tsygankova ◽  
Natalia V. Slobodova ◽  
Dmitry A. Alekseev ◽  
...  

AbstractAnthropogenic activity is the top factor directly related to the extinction of several animal species. The last Steller’s sea cow (Hydrodamalis gigas) population on the Commander Islands (Russia) was wiped out in the second half of the 18th century due to sailors and fur traders hunting it for the meat and fat. However, new data suggests that the extinction process of this species began much earlier. Here, we present a nuclear de novo assembled genome of H. gigas with a 25.4× depth coverage. Our results demonstrate that the heterozygosity of the last population of this animal is low and comparable to the last woolly mammoth population that inhabited Wrangel Island 4000 years ago. Besides, as a matter of consideration, our findings also demonstrate that the extinction of this marine mammal starts along the North Pacific coastal line much earlier than the first Paleolithic humans arrived in the Bering sea region.


1887 ◽  
Vol 21 (12) ◽  
pp. 1047-1054 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonhard Stejneger
Keyword(s):  

Geoheritage ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1981-1987
Author(s):  
Manja Voss ◽  
Oliver Hampe ◽  
Roger Mata Lleonart ◽  
Jordi Ferrer Lopez
Keyword(s):  
Sea Cow ◽  

Nature ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 306 (5942) ◽  
pp. 415-415
Author(s):  
Vera Rich
Keyword(s):  

1972 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 912-914 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. B. Scheffer
Keyword(s):  

2005 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
S.T Turvey ◽  
C.L Risley

Steller's sea cow, a giant sirenian discovered in 1741 and extinct by 1768, is one of the few megafaunal mammal species to have died out during the historical period. The species is traditionally considered to have been exterminated by ‘blitzkrieg’-style direct overharvesting for food, but it has also been proposed that its extinction resulted from a sea urchin population explosion triggered by extirpation of local sea otter populations that eliminated the shallow-water kelps on which sea cows fed. Hunting records from eighteenth century Russian expeditions to the Commander Islands, in conjunction with life-history data extrapolated from dugongs, permit modelling of sea cow extinction dynamics. Sea cows were massively and wastefully overexploited, being hunted at over seven times the sustainable limit, and suggesting that the initial Bering Island sea cow population must have been higher than suggested by previous researchers to allow the species to survive even until 1768. Environmental changes caused by sea otter declines are unlikely to have contributed to this extinction event. This indicates that megafaunal extinctions can be effected by small bands of hunters using pre-industrial technologies, and highlights the catastrophic impact of wastefulness when overexploiting resources mistakenly perceived as ‘infinite’.


1775 ◽  
Vol 65 ◽  
pp. 249-251 ◽  

The sea-cow is a native of the Magdalen Islands, St. John's, and Anticosti in the Gulph of St. Lawrence. They resort very early in the spring to the former of these places, which seems to be by nature particularly adapted to the wants of these animals, abounding with clams of a very large size, and the most convenient landing places, called Echouries. Here they crawl up in great numbers, and sometimes remain for fourteen days together without food, when the weather is fair; but on the first appearance of rain, they immediately retreat to the water with great precipitation. The are, when out of the water, very unweildy, and move with great difficulty. They weigh from 1500 to 2000 pounds, producing, according to their size, from one to two barrels of oil, which is boiled out of a fat substance that lies between the skin and the flesh.


1984 ◽  
Vol 71 (11) ◽  
pp. 586-588 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. E. Rainey ◽  
J. M. Lowenstein ◽  
V. M. Sarich ◽  
D. M. Magor

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document