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Animal profile
Hydrodamalis gigas
Steller's sea cow was an enormous cold-water sirenian, several times the length of a dugong, that grazed kelp in shallow North Pacific waters. It was described in 1741 by Georg Wilhelm Steller during the Bering expedition and was extinct within decades. It had no teeth, using horny plates to grind kelp.
Naturalists first documented the animal in 1741, when a shipwrecked expedition ate it to survive. The last credible record is 1768. Its extinction is one of the fastest on record for a large mammal known to science.
Georg Steller documented the animal in 1741 while shipwrecked in the Bering Sea. The surviving population was small and confined to two islands, and hunting by fur-trade crews finished it by about 1768, some twenty-seven years later.