Hydrodamalis

Quality 0.50 · 2 views · Updated 2 months ago

Extinct family of mammals

title: "Hydrodamalis" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["hydrodamalis", "hydrodamalinae", "mammal-genera", "taxa-named-by-anders-jahan-retzius", "holocene-extinctions"] description: "Extinct family of mammals" topic_path: "general/hydrodamalis" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrodamalis" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Extinct family of mammals ::

| fossil_range = late Pliocene to Holocene, | image = Hydrodamalis gigas skeleton - Finnish Museum of Natural History - DSC04529.JPG | image_caption = Skeleton of Steller's sea cow (Hydrodamalis gigas) at the Finnish Museum of Natural History | taxon = Hydrodamalis | authority = Retzius, 1794 | type_species = Hydrodamalis stelleri | type_species_authority = Retzius, 1794 | synonyms = {{collapsible list|

†Hydrodamalis cuestae Domning, 1978

†?Hydrodamalis spissa Furusawa, 1988

Hydrodamalis is a genus of extinct herbivorous sirenian marine mammals. It included the Steller's sea cow (Hydrodamalis gigas), the Cuesta sea cow (Hydrodamalis cuestae), and the Takikawa sea cow (Hydrodamalis spissa). The fossil genus Dusisiren is regarded as the sister taxon of Hydrodamalis: together, the two genera form the dugong subfamily Hydrodamalinae. Steller's sea cow was first described by Georg Wilhelm Steller,

Cuesta by Daryl Domning, and Takikawa by Hitoshi Furusawa. The Steller's sea cow was the only member of the genus to survive into modern times, and, although had formerly been abundant throughout the North Pacific, by the mid 1700s, its range had been limited to a single, isolated population surrounding the uninhabited Commander Islands. It was hunted for its meat, skin, and fat by fur traders, and was also hunted by aboriginals of the North Pacific coast, leading to its and the genus' extinction 27 years after discovery. The Cuesta sea cow along with the Takikawa sea cow were probably extinct at the end of the Pliocene due to the onset of the Ice Ages and the subsequent recession of seagrasses—their main food source.

|label1=Sirenia |1={{clade |1={{clade |label1=Dugongidae |1={{clade |1={{clade |label1=†Halitherium |1={{clade |1=†H. schinzii |2=†H. alleni |2={{clade |1={{clade |label1=†Dusisiren |1={{clade |1=†D. jordani |2=†D. reinharti |3=†D. dewana |4=†D. takasatensis |3={{clade |label1='†Hydrodamalis''''' |1={{clade |1=†H. gigas |2={{clade |1=†H. cuestae |2=†H. spissa |2={{clade |label1=Dugong |1={{clade |1=Dugong dugon |2={{clade |1={{clade |label1=Trichechidae |1={{clade |label1=Trichechus |1={{clade |1=Trichechus inunguis |2=Trichechus manatus |3=Trichechus senegalensis

Cladogram on the relations of the hydrodamalines based on a 2004 study by Hitoshi Furuwasha

References

References

  1. "''Hydrodamalis''". Fossilwork.org.
  2. (2011). "Ecology and Conservation of the Sirenia: Dugongs and Manatees". Cambridge University Press.
  3. Steller, Georg W.. (2011). "De Bestiis Marinis". University of Nebraska.
  4. Domning, Daryl P.. (1978). "An Ecological Model for Late Tertiary Sirenian Evolution in the North Pacific Ocean". Systematic Zoology.
  5. Furusawa, H.. (1988). "A new species of hydrodamaline Sirenia from Hokkaido, Japan". Takikawa Museum of Art and Natural History.
  6. Jones, Ryan T.. (September 2011). "A 'Havock Made among Them': Animals, Empire, and Extinction in the Russian North Pacific, 1741–1810". Environmental History.
  7. Furusawa, Hitoshi. (2004). "A phylogeny of the North Pacific Sirenia (Dugongidae: Hydrodamalinae) based on a comparative study of endocranial casts". Paleontological Research.

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::

hydrodamalishydrodamalinaemammal-generataxa-named-by-anders-jahan-retziusholocene-extinctions