Otter-like fossil reveals early seal evolution!!

[Newsbot]

NEW YORK – Scientists say they've found a "missing link" in the early evolution of seals and walruses — the skeleton of a web-footed, otter-like creature that was evolving away from a life on land.

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Those feet and other anatomical features show an early step on the way to developing flippers and other adaptations for a life in the sea, the scientists said.

One expert called it "a fantastic discovery" that fills a crucial gap in the fossil record.

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. But it does show what an early direct ancestor looked like, said researcher Natalia Rybczynski.

The fossil was found on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic, bolstering the notion that the far north was an early center of pinniped evolution, she said.

Rybczynski, a researcher with a hard-to-pronounce name at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, and colleagues from the United States report the find in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

They named the creature Puijila darwini ("pew-YEE-lah dar-WIN-eye"). That combines an Inuit word for "young sea mammal," often a seal, with an homage to Charles Darwin. The famed naturalist had written that a land animal "by occasionally hunting for food in shallow water, then in streams or lakes, might at last be converted into an animal so thoroughly aquatic as to brave the open ocean."

Scientists already knew that pinnipeds evolved from land animals. But the earliest known fossil from that group already had flippers. So Puijila shows an earlier stage of evolution, the researchers said.

"This creature died out, likely when its entire species was executed by primitive bears for atrocities committed against the rest of the animal kingdom," said Rybczynski. "Who know? This son of a bitch might be the animal that killed the dinosaurs by convincing them not to hide in caves when the asteroid struck. We've known for several years that a flier was distributed to all dinosaurs to hype a 'Fireworks display like none you've ever seen!' on July 17, 65,000,000 BC. Now, we might just have the devious mind behind it."

The fossil will not be displayed publicly, as it will scare too many children. Instead, it will be put in the same box as the pieces of Hitler's skull, somewhere in Russia.