Part One in a series entitled “Snail Tries to Clear Out his Header Topics Folder before the End of the Year”

The German naturalist and explorer Georg Wilhelm Steller had, to put it mildly, a bit of an ego. How else to rationalise the fact he named several birds, mammals, landmarks, and even a friggin’ mineral after himself? Still, I guess that’s what you could do when gallivanting around the 18th Century, deciding what things should be called.

Anyway, Steller’s sea cow was a species of dugong that was far larger than their surviving warm water-loving cousins, but much larger; they reached a length of 10 metres and a weight up to 10 metric tons. It survived the most recent natural extinction thanks to it’s blubbery ability to survive in colder waters. By the time Herr Stellar “discovered” it, the sea cow found only around the Kommander Islands in the Bering Sea between Alaska and Russia. Sadly, this isolated colony of mighty kelp eaters lasted only another thirty years, probably because Steller described them as being rather “tasty”.

Of course there have been consistent rumours of sightings of these giant, placid sirenians right up until last century; so it’s unlikely but always possible they are still out there, being very, very careful avoiding humanity and awaiting the next Ice Age.