Steller's sea cow
Steller's sea cow was discovered in 1741 by Georg Wilhelm Steller, and was named after him. Steller researched the wildlife of Bering Island while he was shipwrecked there for about a year; the animals on the island included relict populations of sea cows, sea otters, Steller sea lions, and northern fur seals. As the crew hunted the animals to survive, Steller described them in detail. Steller's account was included in his posthumous publication "De bestiis marinis", or "The Beasts of the Sea", which was published in 1751 by the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg. Zoologist Eberhard von Zimmermann formally described Steller's sea cow in 1780 as "Manati gigas". Biologist Anders Jahan Retzius in 1794 put the sea cow in the new genus "Hydrodamalis", with the specific name of "stelleri", in honor of Steller. In 1811, naturalist Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger reclassified Steller's sea cow into the genus "Rytina", which many writers at the time adopted. The name "Hydrodamalis gigas", the correct "combinatio nova" if a separate genus is recognised, was first used in 1895 by Theodore Sherman Palmer.