At that time, it was found only around the Commander Islands in the Bering Sea between Alaska and Russia; its range extended across the North Pacific during the Pleistocene epoch, and likely contracted to such an extreme degree due to the glacial cycle.

Steller believed it was a monogamous and social animal living in small family groups and raising its young, similar to modern sirenians.

[12][5] Steller's sea cow had small eyes located halfway between its nostrils and ears with black irises, livid eyeballs, and canthi which were not externally visible.

[5] Genetic evidence indicates convergent evolution with other marine mammals of genes related to metabolic and immune function, including leptin associated with energy homeostasis and reproductive regulation.

The sea cow likely fed on several species of kelp, which have been identified as Agarum spp., Alaria praelonga, Halosaccion glandiforme, Laminaria saccharina, Nereocyctis luetkeana, and Thalassiophyllum clathrus.

Steller's sea cow only fed directly on the soft parts of the kelp, which caused the tougher stem and holdfast to wash up on the shore in heaps.

[15][6][23] Steller noted that the sea cow grew thin during the frigid winters, indicating a period of fasting due to low kelp growth.

Steller's account was included in his posthumous publication De bestiis marinis, or The Beasts of the Sea, which was published in 1751 by the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg.

Biologist Anders Jahan Retzius in 1794 put the sea cow in the new genus Hydrodamalis, with the specific name of stelleri, in honor of Steller.

[4] In 1811, naturalist Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger reclassified Steller's sea cow into the genus Rytina, which many writers at the time adopted.

Some authors did not believe possible the recovery of further significant skeletal material from the Commander Islands after this period, but a skeleton was found in 1983, and two zoologists collected about 90 bones in 1991.

[34] It is known that Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld, Benedykt Dybowski, and Leonhard Hess Stejneger unearthed many skeletal remains from different individuals in the late 1800s, from which composite skeletons were assembled.

Pallas did not specify a source; Stejneger suggested it may have been one of the original illustrations produced by Friedrich Plenisner, a member of Vitus Bering's crew as a painter and surveyor who drew a figure of a female sea cow on Steller's request.

[35][36] Another drawing of Steller's sea cow similar to the Pallas Picture appeared on a 1744 map drawn by Sven Waxell and Sofron Chitrow.

Another similar image was found by Alexander von Middendorff in 1867 in the library of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and is probably a copy of the Tsarskoye Selo Picture.

[41] The remains of three individuals were found preserved in the South Bight Formation of Amchitka; as late Pleistocene interglacial deposits are rare in the Aleutians, the discovery suggests that sea cows were abundant in that era.

[37] Genetic evidence suggests the Steller's sea cows around the Commander Islands were the last of a much more ubiquitous population dispersed across the North Pacific coastal zones.

In any event, the range of the sea cow was limited to coastal areas off uninhabited islands by the time Bering arrived, and the animal was already endangered.

[19] This small population was quickly wiped out by fur traders, seal hunters, and others who followed Vitus Bering's route past its habitat to Alaska.

This bounty inspired maritime fur traders to detour to the Commander Islands and restock their food supplies during North Pacific expeditions.

This indicates that due to the sea cow's extinction, the ecosystem dynamics and resilience of North Pacific kelp forests may have already been compromised well before more well-known modern stressors like overharvesting and climate change.

The previous year, the whaling ship Buran had reported a group of large marine mammals grazing on seaweed in shallow water off Kamchatka,[50] in the Gulf of Anadyr.

[13] Because the sea cow is extinct, native artisan products made in Alaska from this "mermaid ivory" are legal to sell in the United States and do not fall under the jurisdiction of the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) or the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which restrict the trade of marine mammal products.

[59][60] Steller's sea cows appear in two books of poetry: Nach der Natur (1995) by Winfried Georg Sebald, and Species Evanescens (2009) by Russian poet Andrei Bronnikov.

[62] The novel Elolliset (Living things) (2023) by Finnish author and literary scholar Iida Turpeinen uses Steller's sea cow and its demise as a central theme.

[63] Scottish poet John Glenday published the poem "The Kelp Eaters" in his 2003 volume, Grain, describing the beauty and loving nature of the sea cows and their harpooning by the narrator and his companions.

The poem carries the epigraph "From “Journal of a Voyage with Bering 1741-1742” By Georg Wilhelm Steller" [64] In 2021, the nuclear genome of the species was sequenced from skeletal remains.

[19] The reconstructed genome showed that the species was already declining due to low genetic diversity caused by climate change and hunting by Paleolithic humans prior to its discovery by Steller, similar to the final populations of woolly mammoths on Wrangel Island.

A year later, in late 2022, a group of Russian scientists funded by Sergi Bachin began research to potentially revive the species and reintroduce it to the Bering Sea.

[65] Ben Lamm of Colossal Biosciences has also stated that he and his company want to revive the species after they complete their first four projects (woolly mammoth, dodo, thylacine, and northern white rhinoceros) and have an artificial animal womb developed.