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- Today’s seals and sea lions are not direct descendants of Puijila, but the otter-like mammal represents what pinniped ancestors were like at one point in the distant past. Paleontologists know this because rock layers of about the same age—about 24 million years old—as Puijila contain the remains of the early pinniped Enaliarctos.
www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-did-seals-and-sea-lions-never-commit-to-a-life-fully-at-sea-180983926/Why Did Seals and Sea Lions Never Commit to a Life Fully at ...
The earliest ancestors of seals and sea lions were mammals that transitioned from life on land to life at sea. Around 36 million years ago, at the end of the Oligocene, the ocean began to cool, which caused major changes to ocean circulation.
Mar 20, 2024 · Today’s seals and sea lions are not direct descendants of Puijila, but the otter-like mammal represents what pinniped ancestors were like at one point in the distant past.
- Riley Black
Apr 21, 2009 · Researchers have found a fossilized ancestor of modern seals and sea lions that they say represents an evolutionary step in the organisms' transition from land-dwelling mammals to the aquatic creatures they are today.
The oldest definitive pinniped fossils date from approximately 30.6–23 million years ago (Ma) in the North Pacific. Pinniped monophyly is consistently supported; the group shares a common ancestry with arctoid carnivorans, either ursids or musteloids. Crown pinnipeds comprise the Otariidae (fur seals and sea lions), Odobenidae (walruses), and ...
Apr 22, 2009 · The 23 million-year-old creature was not a direct ancestor of today's seals, sea lions and walruses, a group known collectively as pinnipeds. It's from a different branch.
Aug 17, 2023 · Over 23 million years ago, an ancient relative of modern seals called Potamotherium valletoni was possibly one of the first pinnipeds to use their whiskers to forage for food and explore...
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Apr 22, 2009 · Scientists have found the first skeleton of a land-dwelling relative of seals, sea lions, and walruses. The 20-million- to 24-million-year-old Arctic fossil sports webbed feet instead of flippers, providing a long-sought glimpse of what such animals looked like before they dove into the sea.