McGill Paleontologist Discovers Pygmy Sea Cow

An ancient pygmy sea cow isn't the kind of thing you find every day. More like every 45 million years. So when Karen Samonds, curator at McGill University's Redpath Museum and a paleontologist, discovered fossilized teeth and bits of skull embedded in sandstone and limestone rocks in the island nation off the east coast of Africa, she wasn't immediately sure what she had stumbled upon. For one thing, the teeth were many times larger than the tiny bones and teeth of the land mammals she usually studies. It was one part "Eureka!" moment - "I couldn't believe we actually found a mammal" - and two parts "What the heck is this?" Samonds's sea cow, also known as a dugong, is a prehistoric cousin of today's dugongs and manatees, about three-quarters the size of today's creatures. This sea cow dates back to the Middle Eocene period, between 37.2 million and 48.6 million years ago.