STELLER’S SEA COW: A GENTLE GIANT LOST TO HISTORY

Steller’s sea cow, Hydrodamalis gigasThe Steller’s sea cow, Hydrodamalis gigas, was an enormous marine mammal that once grazed the kelp forests of the North Pacific. Closely related to the modern dugong—and more distantly to manatees—it belonged to the order Sirenia, an ancient group of plant-eating mammals whose evolutionary history reaches back more than 50 million years.Growing to