Steller’s sea cow

Steller’s sea cow (Hydrodamalis gigas) was a sirenian that lived until 1768 around the Commander Islands in the Bering Sea, named for the naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller. He discovered the species in 1741 on Vitus Bering’s Great Northern Expedition, when the crew was shipwrecked on Bering Island, and described it in The Beasts of the […]