Word: dugong
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Whose Asian cousin, the dugong, is believed to have inspired ancient sailors to spin the first mermaid yarns...
...dugong is a ludicrous-looking aquatic mammal that nurses its young at its breast. Sighting these strange creatures centuries ago. sailors plowing Asian seas came home claiming that they had seen women with tails like fish-and thereby started the mermaid legend. Modern scientists paid deference to the legend of the sea sirens by assigning the dugong to the order Sirenia. See SCIENCE, The Useful Manatee...