Chinese paddlefish (Psephurus gladius): Gone Extinct

Chinese paddlefish (Psephurus gladius): Gone Extinct

Part of: GS Prelims and GS-III- Environment Conservation 

In News

• It is a freshwater fish, dating back from 200 million years ago whose ancestral home was the Yangtze River.
• It is also known as Chinese swordfish with a snot like structure packed with cells to detect electrical activity in prey animals such as crustaceans

• It is declared extinct by Chinese researchers based on the Red List criteria of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

• Overfishing and habitat fragmentation — including dam building — caused its population to dwindle from the 1970s onward