Thursday, August 09, 2007

The Goddess of the Yangtze

The Baiji, or Yangtze River Dolphin (poetically known to the ancient Chinese as the Goddess of the Yangtze), is essentially no more. Although a few scientists still hold out hope that there may be a few survivors, they would be too few in number for the species to recover.

Yangtze River Dolphin
It has been declared officially extinct, the first official extinction of a large vertebrate for fifty years.

(Thanks to John Lynch at Stranger Fruit.)

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