EXTINCT: FIRST LARGE VERTEBRATE IN 50 YEARS AND FOURTH MAMMAL TO DISAPPEAR SINCE THE TIME OF COLUMBUS JEREMY LAURANCE, INDEPENDENT, UK – 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’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. http://environment.independent.co.uk/wildlife/article2843953.ece