Hafniae et Lipsiae [= Copenhagen & Leipzig], Impensis Ioanis Gottlob Rothe: xvi + 452. 1 pl.

–Allen 356. Reports a partial cranium of "Trichechus manatus" from Greenland (6). The natives applied the name Auvekaejak to both this animal and "Phoca ursina"; Fabricius took it to be identical with the species described by Steller. It may, however, actually have been T. manatus; see Domning (1978b: 138). Hinrich Rink, 1857, Grønland geographisk og statistisk beskrevet, vol. 2, has an appendix by Prof. J. Reinhardt ["List of Greenland's Mammals, Birds and Fishes"], which contains on pp. 6-8 a lengthy footnote concerning Fabricius' Auvekaejak or supposed manatee skull. Reinhardt dismisses the idea that it could be a seacow or even a mammal. He notes that Fabricius found it "in Sildefjorden [= the Herring Fiord] north of Friderichshaabs Coloni [= Frederikshaab /Paamiut] in a Bjergkløft [= mountain ravine]". Fabricius did not preserve the skull, but mentioned it again in his posthumous zoological manuscripts entitled Zoologiske Samlinger [=Zoological Collections], written in Copenhagen in the period 1808-1814, and kept in the Royal Library. There he says about the Auvekaejak: "the skull, which I found, was very shabby and looked much like that of a walrus (No. 82), except for the teeth which were many, long, narrow, placed forwards in a cluster [Klynge, which may be Reinhardt's word] at each side." (Summary and translation by Ella Hoch.) See copy of Rink at nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.FIG:006445420.