Enaliarctos

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Enaliarctos
Temporal range: Late
Ma
E. mealsi fossil
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Clade: Pinnipedimorpha
Family: Enaliarctidae
Mitchell & Tedford, 1973
Genus: Enaliarctos
Mitchell & Tedford, 1973
Species
  • E. mealsi (type)
  • E. barnesi
  • E. emlongi
  • E. mitchelli
  • E. tedfordi

Enaliarctos[1] is an extinct genus of pinnipedimorph, and may represent the ancestor to all pinnipeds. Prior to the discovery of Puijila, the five species in the genus Enaliarctos represented the oldest known pinnipedimorph fossils, having been recovered from late Oligocene and early Miocene (ca. 24–22 million years ago) strata of California and Oregon.

Description

E. mealsi reconstruction and size comparison

It had a short

whiskers, and a specialized inner ear
for hearing underwater.

Evolution

Enaliarctos has been heralded as the ancestor of all known pinnipeds, including the families

fossils from coastal Oregon. It existed between 13 and 20 million years ago, during the Hemingfordian age of the Miocene epoch. It was named for renowned fossil collector Douglas Emlong in 1991 by paleontologist Annalisa Berta
.

Notes

  1. ^ From Greek ἐνάλιος, enalios, of the sea; and ἄρκτος, arktos, bear, "referring to the arctoid, including ursid, Carnivora" (Mitchell & Tedford, 1973, p. 218).

References

  • Berta, A., C.E. Ray and A.R. Wyss. 1989. Skeleton of the oldest known pinniped, Enaliarctos mealsi. Science 244:60-62.
  • Berta, A. 1991. New Enaliarctos* (Pinnipedimorpha) from the Miocene of Oregon and the role of "Enaliarctids" in Pinniped Phylogeny. Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology 69.
  • Dixon, D., Moody, R., Jenkins, I. and Zhuravlev, A.Y., Cassell's Atlas of Evolution. Oxford 2001
  • Mitchell, E., & Tedford, R.H. 1973. The Enaliarctinae: A new group of extinct aquatic Carnivora and a consideration of the origin of the Otariidae. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 151(3), 203-284 (available online)
  • Wallace, D.R. 2007. Neptune's Ark: From Ichthyosaurs to Orcas. University of California Press.

External links