"Give us the cuttle...fish...."

"Give us the cuttle...fish...."
https://youtu.be/eICyqjtsizo

Originally shared by American Museum of Natural History

This ‪#‎FossilFriday‬ is a Florida native!
Metaxytherium floridanum is a 12-million-year-old sea cow. The earliest known fossils of sea cows are found in 50-million-year-old marine sediments, yet even at that early stage, two groups of sea cows had already evolved—the dugongs and the manatees. Metaxytherium is an extinct dugong. Unlike manatees, dugongs lack nails on their flippers, and have a deeply notched tail fin with two pointed lobes. Throughout most of the evolutionary history of sea cows, their habitat has corresponded to the places where sea grass grows. These are primarily in tropical and subtropical coastal shoreline environments and estuaries. This fossil was collected in 1929 in Gadsden County, Florida. 
Another immense dugong species, the Stellar sea cow, survived until around the year 1800 in the waters of the North Pacific. Reaching a length of almost 25 feet (7.5 meters) and weighing about 9,000 lbs (4,000 kg), it was hunted to extinction by humans. 
See this fossil in the Hall of Advanced Mammals: http://bit.ly/1HzEBFK
AMNH/C.Chesek