– Gelb markiert die Verbreitung der Seekuh im Pleistozän.
– Blaue Punkte kennzeichnen Orte mit historischen Aufzeichnungen über die Anwesenheit der Seekuh.
– Rote Punkte kennzeichnen Orte mit archäologischen Beweisen für die Anwesenheit der Seekuh.
Von GustavoistSoldier
11 Kommentare
I wish we could bring the massive cold water manatees back
RIP Steller’s sea cow
Ridiculously sad
So it was already moribund even before humans discovered it?
While they were technically hunted to extinction, important to note that the thought is that the species was on its last leg (fin?) even without human hunting (this includes all hunting from the paleolithic period to the 18th century) due to changing climates. The map you share is from a [2021 article](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8044168/) that makes that case.
Paleolithic and modern hunting certainly didn’t help the situation, but it would be simplistic to say that it was the only cause of their extinction.
This makes me consider what a „map“ actually is. Conceptually. Usually distributions are illustrated as „graphs“, no? So is this a map, or a graph with geographic axes?
“ Steller reported that as a female was being captured, a group of other sea cows attacked the hunting boat by ramming and rocking it, and after the hunt, her mate followed the boat to shore, even after the captured animal had died. “ ….. 😓 👍 Good job Human (as usual) ! Source Wikipedia
Really interesting distribution considering this animal was an Afrotherian, meaning it’s a part of the mammalian lineage that evolved in isolation in Africa for the millions of years that the continent was an island. It ventured a long way from its ancestral home.
Other fun facts:
– the Sirenians (sea cows, dugongs, and manatees) are the only living marine mammals that are herbivorous, and they are the only lineage of herbivorous mammals that went fully aquatic (that we know of).
– while they are very distantly related to pinnipeds (sea lions, walruses, and seals) and cetaceans (whales), and are more closely related to tenrecs and aardvarks, it is believed that the three evolved to be fully aquatic at roughly the same time.
– phylogeny and evolutionary biology can be fun!
I didn’t realize the guy steller’e jays were named after ws so prolific in his documentation of species and went that far
how do we know it’s distribution in yellow without archeological or historical records in most of the area?
ronograd mentioned