Scientists surprised.
Despite otsutstvie head skeleton found remains can help researchers to shed light on several mysteries about this huge extinct animal.
For example, researchers are not sure how many of the vertebrae had a cow of Steller, and they are not sure, looked like fins, said Daryl Domini, Professor of anatomy at Howard University in Washington, DC.
From preliminary descriptions, posted online, “this is the first, possibly a complete skeleton of the fore limbs of this ancient animal,” said Doming in Live Science.
Researcher Marina Shitova found the sea-cow of Steller (Hydrodamalis gigas) during traversal of the coastline of the commander nature reserve. She noticed the edges of the dead creature sticking out of the sand and pebbles. A few days later, the reserve staff returned to excavate the bones, which took a total of 4 hours.
The skeleton is 5.2 meters in length. But, given the length of missing parts (including the head), sea cow Steller’s probably reached 6 meters.
Unusual that the newly discovered copy is so well preserved, said Domini. Over the past 200 years, researchers found only parts of the bones of sea cows. Because they had a few full samples, the researchers collected bone from different sources, to exhibit specimens in natural history museums.
In recent times researchers have found almost the full skeleton of sea cow of Steller 30 years ago, when on Bering island in Russia.
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