Relevance: prelims: Biodiversity
Why in news?
- The Chinese paddlefish, one of the largest freshwater fish has been declared extinct in a study published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.
Key highlights:
- The Chinese paddlefish (Psephurus gladius) was an iconic species, measuring up to 7 m in length, dating back from 200 million years ago, and therefore swimming the rivers when dinosaurs ruled the Earth.
- Its ancestral home was the Yangtze River.
- Recently, Chinese researchers declared it extinct based on the Red List criteria of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
- Between 1981 and 2003, there were just around 210 sightings of the fish. The researchers estimate that it became functionally extinct by 1993, and extinct sometime between 2005-2010.