Goddess goes extinct

last updated 8 January 2015

Yangtze River, China

The baiji, a freshwater dolphin known as the “goddess of the Yangtze,” is extinct, scientists said this week. The latest search of the river produced no sightings of the species, which lived in the Yangtze for 20 million years. Even if a few survive, researchers said, there are not enough to perpetuate the species. The demise is blamed on overfishing, which left the dolphins with little food, and construction of the Three Gorges Dam, which caused environmental devastation across the entire watershed.