The Yangtze river dolphin was thought to be extinct, a victim of China’s explosive economic growth and environmental negligence, but one of the baiji, as the animal is known, was just caught on tape—alive and well.
If you’ve been putting off that trip to see China’s “goddess of the Yangtze,” you’ve waited too long. Scientists believe the human-sized dolphin to be the first aquatic mammal species to go extinct in half a century, a victim of China’s economic growth.