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| Steller's sea cow could weigh four tons and had a length of up to 25 feet (Chron) |
The researchers say that the sea cow helped the kelp forest grow more robust, even when eating its weight in seaweed, because it grazed kelp near the surface of the water. That allowed more light to penetrate, encouraging more growth of both kelp and other types of algae...Two points:
“If you spend time in a kelp forest today, at least a healthy one, one of the impressions we take away is it’s dark, almost cathedral like, and the light is filtering down. The kelp absorbs most of the incoming sunlight right at the surface,” said Peter Roopnarine, coauthor of the study and a curator of geology at the California Academy of Sciences. “If the sea cow was grazing the canopy there would have been more light penetration.”
Knowledge of the Steller’s sea cow is based on fossils found from Baja California to Northern Alaska, skeletons collected when they were hunted and historic observations made in Alaska, especially by the scientist Georg Wilhelm Steller who gave it its name. The animal may have had a peak population of 200,000, according to a study published this year.
Like its closest living relative, the dugong, a marine mammal in the Western Pacific and Indian oceans that is in the same family as manatees, the beast had a long, rotund body, short front flippers and a whale-like tail. Its skin was “more the bark of an old oak tree, than the skin of an animal,” Steller reportedly observed. It also had a downturned snout for feeding on kelp while floating on the surface, Roopnarine said.
1) It seems to be a law of nature: thinning forests on land or sea will make them stronger.
2) The age of exploration marked the end of the Middle Ages and rejuvenated Europe. However, the same philosophy that embraced a limitless world for the taking left in its wake the extinction (circa 1700) of creatures like Steller's sea cow. It's unfortunate that the error was realized centuries too late.
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