{"id":36,"date":"2008-10-29T01:49:32","date_gmt":"2008-10-29T06:49:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/?p=36"},"modified":"2008-10-29T01:49:32","modified_gmt":"2008-10-29T06:49:32","slug":"extinct-first-large-vertebrate-in-50-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/extinct-first-large-vertebrate-in-50-years\/","title":{"rendered":"EXTINCT: FIRST LARGE VERTEBRATE IN 50 YEARS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>EXTINCT: FIRST LARGE VERTEBRATE IN 50 YEARS AND FOURTH MAMMAL TO  DISAPPEAR SINCE THE TIME OF COLUMBUS  JEREMY LAURANCE, INDEPENDENT, UK &#8211; After more than 20 million years on  the planet, the Yangtze river dolphin is officially declared extinct,  the first species of cetacean (whale, dolphin or porpoise) to be driven  from this planet by human activity. An intensive six-week search by an  international team of marine biologists involving two boats that  ploughed up and down the world&#8217;s busiest river last December failed to  find a single specimen. . .  To blame for its demise is the increasing  number of container ships that use the Yangtze, as well as the fishermen  whose nets became an inadvertent hazard. This is no ordinary extinction  of the kind that occurs frequently in a world of millions of  still-evolving species. The Yangtze freshwater dolphin was a remarkable  creature that separated from all other species so many millions of years  ago, and had become so distinct, that it qualified as a mammal family in  its own right. It is the first large vertebrate to have become extinct  for 50 years and only the fourth entire mammal family to disappear since  the time of Columbus, when Europeans began their colonization of the  world.  <a title=\"First Large Vertebrate to go Extinct in 50 Years\" href=\"http:\/\/environment.independent.co.uk\/wildlife\/article2843953.ece \" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/environment.independent.co.uk\/wildlife\/article2843953.ece <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>EXTINCT: FIRST LARGE VERTEBRATE IN 50 YEARS AND FOURTH MAMMAL TO DISAPPEAR SINCE THE TIME OF COLUMBUS JEREMY LAURANCE, INDEPENDENT, UK &#8211; After more than 20 million years on the planet, the Yangtze river dolphin is officially declared extinct, the first species of cetacean (whale, dolphin or porpoise) to be driven from this planet by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37,"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions\/37"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}