By contrast, manatees are typically only about six feet long. The Pleistocene animal was toothless, as was the modern Steller's sea cow (Hy drodamalis gigas), which was exterminated by Russian hunters about 1768. The Sea Cows could not reproduce quickly enough to make up for this, and so they were rapidly wiped out. However, excessive hunting was the main cause. In earlier eras, their range might have extended further across the Pacific, from Japan all the way to California and Mexico. Steller sea lions tend to live in the coastal waters of the subarctic because of the cooler temperate climate of the area. The body structure of Steller’s sea cow was quite like a large seal, but they had two sturdy forelimbs and a whale-like fluke. Contents. Sea cow, (Hydrodamalis gigas), very large aquatic mammal, now extinct, that once inhabited nearshore areas of the Komandor Islands in the Bering Sea. They were slow swimmers and, in fact, historical account suggests that it was difficult for them to get completely submerged. Steller's sea cow (reconstruction) Etymology . 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When word got around about how much food they could provide, many people went out and hunted them in the following years. Otters in the area were also hunted, and as the effect of this spread down the food chain, kelp became more scarce. The Sea Cows ate kelp and sea grass, so they lived in shallower areas where there were a lot of these. Why is the Cross River Gorilla Endangered? Hunters killed seven times as many as they could actually eat, given that a single Sea Cow could feed 33 men for a month. Although it's much less well known than the Dodo Bird or the Giant Moa, Steller's Sea Cow (genus name Hydrodamalis) shared the unfortunate fate of these famous birds. flashcard set{{course.flashcardSetCoun > 1 ? Sciences, Culinary Arts and Personal Most of what we know about the animal comes from him and from reports of sailors who encountered the animals. 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