Skeleton of Long-Vanished Sea Cow Discovered on Remote Island

The now extinct Steller’s sea cow once inhabited the shallow waters around the Commander Islands in the Bering Sea. (Courtesy of Biodiversity Heritage Library (CC BY), Creative Commons)

A researcher in Russia’s Far East recently stumbled upon the skeletal remains of a Steller’s sea cow, a massive mammal hunted to extinction only several decades after it was first discovered by Europeans in 1741.

Marina Shitova, from the Commander Islands Nature and Biosphere Reserve, recently found the skeleton while she was monitoring the coastline of Bering Island.