In 1741, an unknown marine mammal nearly as big as a killer whale was discovered by Georg Wilhelm Steller, sailing with Captain Bering on a North Pacific voyage. Steller’s sea cow, as the creature came to be called, was:
A) A dolphin-whale hybrid B) Hunted to extinction within 27 years ü C) Never seen again D) Too tough and sinewy to hunt profitably
Steller’s sea cow, a four-ton relative of the manatee and dugong, was a remarkable creature whose sub-Arctic lifestyle and unusual skeletal features, not just its great size, distinguished it from its warm-water cousins. Shipwrecked on an unknown island on the journey home to Russia, Bering’s expedition was saved (though the captain himself died) only by the meat of a sea cow they managed to kill. Unfortunately, they found it tasty. By 1768, the small, concentrated population of Steller’s sea cows had been swept from the sea by a succession of expeditions using Bering Island as a convenient local larder.
