Extinction of The Baiji
On December 13, 2006, the baiji (Lipotes vexillifer) was declared "functionally extinct", after a 45-day search by leading experts in the field failed to find a single specimen. The last verified sighting was in September 2004. In August 2007, reports surfaced that a man saw and videotaped what appears to be a baiji in the Yangtze River. A team of scientists attempted to verify the sighting beginning in September 2007.
Overfishing, damming and subaquatic sonar pollution (which interfered with the dolphins' sonar-based method of locating food), is believed to have led to their extinction. Reuters news reported this as their first record of an aquatic mammalian extinction in 50 years.
Read more about this topic: River Dolphin
Famous quotes containing the words extinction of and/or extinction:
“War was return of earth to ugly earth,
War was foundering of sublimities,
Extinction of each happy art and faith
By which the world had still kept head in air.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)
“The problems of this world are only truly solved in two ways: by extinction or duplication.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)