Enaliarctos
Sign in to saveEnaliarctos is an extinct genus of pinnipedimorph, and may represent the ancestor to all pinnipeds. The five species in the genus Enaliarctos have been recovered from late Oligocene and early Miocene (ca. 28-17 million years ago) strata of California and Oregon.
In the Vinony graph
Vinony's link graph records 102 inbound references to Enaliarctos, and connects out to Odobenidae, Phocinae and Phocidae.
Vinony files it under Aquitanian genus extinctions, Chattian genus first appearances and Fossil taxa described in 1973.
Vinony links it to 14 Wikipedia language editions.
Wikidata facts
- Image
- Enaliarctos mealsi.JPG
Show 6 more facts
- taxon name
- Enaliarctos
- taxon rank
- genus
- Commons category
- Enaliarctos
- start time
- 24000000-0
- end time
- 22000000-0
- taxon author citation
- Mitchell & Tedford, 1973
Sources (1)
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Encyclopedic overview
5 sectionsContents
- Description
- Evolution
- Notes
- References
- External links
Enaliarctos is an extinct genus of pinnipedimorph, and may represent the ancestor to all pinnipeds. The five species in the genus Enaliarctos have been recovered from late Oligocene and early Miocene (ca. 28-17 million years ago) strata of California and Oregon.
==Description== left|thumb|E. mealsi reconstruction and size comparison It had a short tail and developed limbs with webbed feet. Unlike modern sea lions, it had a set of slicing carnassials; the presence of slicing teeth (rather than purely piercing teeth as in modern fish-eating pinnipeds) suggests that Enaliarctos needed to return to shore with prey items in order to masticate and ingest them. Still, Enaliarctos had some sea lion-like characteristics, such as large eyes, sensitive whiskers, and a specialized inner ear for hearing underwater.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Enaliarctos” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.