The Pinnipedia: An Essay in Zoogeography

Re-Evaluation of Morphological Characters Questions Current Views of Pinniped Origins

“…Th e view of pinniped relationships by Wyss (1987) is diametrically opposite to even the traditional monophyletic proposals, in which the shared common ancestry of Phocidae and Otariidae was very ancient (Late Oligocene) and involved primitive carnivorans (e. g., Davies, 1958;Scheff er, 1958;King, 1964King, , 1983, rather than animals that are usually considered to represent relatively highly derived stem groups. Wyss (1988 a, b), Berta et al (1989), and Wyss and Flynn (1993) interpreted skeletal features of various fossil and living pinnipeds as supporting pinniped monophyly.…”

“…Th e monophyletic origin hypothesis contends that all pinnipeds are derived from a single terrestrial arctoid (Simpson, 1945 : 233;Davies, 1958;Scheff er, 1958;Ärnason, 1977;King, 1983;Wiig, 1983;Flynn et al, 2005;Finarelli, 2008), with either ursids being the likely sister group (Wyss, 1987;Flynn et al, 1988;Berta et al, 1989;Higdon et al, 2007), or Musteloidea as a sister group to Pinnipedia (Sato et al, 2006). Proponents of a monophyletic origin usually recognize a suborder or other higher taxon called the Pinnipedia or Pinnipedimorpha.…”

The monophyletic origin of sea lions and fur seals (Carnivora; Otariidae) in the Southern Hemisphere

“…5). Previous workers (e.g., Davies, 1958;Repenning et al, 1979;Deméré et al, 2003) proposed otariids first dispersed from the Northern to the Southern Hemisphere when fur seals moved along the west coast of Americas (i.e., eastern Pacific) during the late Miocene or early Pliocene. Separately, sea lions used the same route during the Late Pliocene or Early Pleistocene after they evolved in the North Pacific.…”

Pinniped turnover in the South Pacific Ocean: new evidence from the Plio-Pleistocene of the Atacama Desert, Chile

“…Their global, historical biogeography and dispersal patterns have attracted considerable attention (e.g., Davies, 1958;Repenning et al, 1979;Arnason et al, 2006;Koretsky and Barnes, 2006), although few publications (e.g., Deméré et al, 2003;Fulton and Strobeck, 2010) have developed testable hypotheses for observed patterns, invoking changes in global ocean circulation as putative evolutionary drivers during the late Paleogene and Neogene. Equally interesting, though sometimes neglected, are the faunal turnovers or evolutionary changes within regional assemblages over geologic time.…”