Wires, etc.: pew-Yee-lah dar-WIN-eye
From the lake bed of a warmer Arctic comes a “walking seal,” 23 million year old fossil that is an early ancestor of modern pinnipeds, reported in Thursday’s journal Nature, and widely circulated by the wires.
The fossil was found on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic. The artist’s rendering of the skeleton is from the Canadian Museum of Nature. The new creature is Puijila, as in the Inuit word for young sea mammal, and darwini, as in Charles.
At the AP, Malcom Ritter wrote that scientists thought they had found a “missing link” in the early evolution of seals and walruses and quoted one expert who called it a “fantastic discovery that fills a critical evolutionary gap (from) when terrestrial carnivores traded limbs for fins and moved from land to sea.”
At Reuters, David Ljunggren called it “a previously unknown web-footed carnivore that helps explain how seals developed from land-based mammals.”
At LiveScience, Andrea Thompson had a great angle on the accidental discovery of the fossil by a team led by paleontologist Natalia Rybczynski, which was on Devon Island to visit a meteor crater. “The team’s vehicle had run out of gas, and the first bone of the animal was found while waiting for team members to return with fuel.”
Grist for the Mill: Like any self-respecting celebrity, Puijila “the walking seal” has his own website
-JDC
