National Geographic News, Reporting Your World Daily

Monday, November 23, 2009

Photo: Seal With "Arms" Discovered -- Evolution at Work


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A newfound, flipperless prehistoric seal (at top in an artist's conception) is the first concrete link between the land ancestors of pinnipeds (seals, sea lions, and walruses) and modern ocean-going, flippered pinnipeds, such as the California sea lion (bottom), an April 2009 study says.

Illustration courtesy Mark A. Klingler of Carnegie Museum of Natural
History (CMNH); photograph by Bates Littlehales/NGS