Florida’s Manatees Are Relative Newcomers, According to Historical Research

This piece was originally published in The Guardian and appears here as part of our Climate Desk collaboration. Manatees, long considered among Florida’s most beloved and enchanting inhabitants, are not native at all, and only came to the Sunshine State for warm temperatures and clear blue waters like any other visitor, researchers have found. The surprise revelation by scientists at the University of South Florida (USF) and George Washington University (GWU) upends decades of thinking about the origins of the threatened species, once plentiful around the Florida peninsula, the Gulf…

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