Acrophoca
Acrophoca longirostris, also known as the swan-necked seal, is an extinct genus of Late Miocene pinniped. It was thought to have been the ancestor of the modern leopard seal; however, it is now thought to be a species of monk seal.
Jonathan Chen · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- LobodontiniPBDB
- Diet
- piscivore, carnivorePBDB, for Phocidae
- Life habit
- amphibiousPBDB, for Pinnipedia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Pinnipedia
Time the record covers
At most 6.3 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 11.63 Mya and 5.333 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
13 occurrences of Acrophoca on record, most of them in the Miocene. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
13 occurrences- Miocene100%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
2 formations
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The named rock units Acrophoca has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Acrophoca and its relatives
MioceneWhere Acrophoca and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
151 taxa- Monachinae6 sites
- Myliobatis5 sites
- Spheniscidae5 sites
- Alosidae4 sites
- Balaenopteridae4 sites
- Carcharodon hastalis4 sites
- Cetotheriidae4 sites
- Megatheriidae4 sites
- Otodus megalodon4 sites
- Pelagornis4 sites
- Phalacrocorax4 sites
- Phocidae4 sites
- Phocoenidae4 sites
- Piscophoca4 sites
- Spheniscus urbinai4 sites
- Sula4 sites
- Carcharodon carcharias3 sites
- Hadrokirus martini3 sites
- Piscobalaena nana3 sites
- Piscogavialis jugaliperforatus3 sites
- Ariidae2 sites
- Australophoca changorum2 sites
- Balaenoptera siberi2 sites
- Brachydelphis jahuayensis2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 11 sites for Acrophoca, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
9 references- Geology and paleontology of late Cenozoic marine deposits in the Sacaco area (Peru)3
- Exceptional morphological and taxonomic diversity of early seals (Phocidae) from the Atacama Region, Chile2
- Fossil seals from late Neogene deposits in South America: A new pinniped (Carnivora, Mammalia) assemblage from Chile2
- Did the giant extinct shark Carcharocles megalodon target small prey? Bite marks on marine mammal remains from the late Miocene of Peru1
- Mamíferos marinos (Excepto Cetáceos) fósiles de Chile1
- Repeated mass strandings of Miocene marine mammals from Atacama Region of Chile point to sudden death at sea1
- Nuevos materiales fósiles referidos a Acrophoca Muizon y Piscophoca Muizon (Pinnipedia: Phocidae) del Neógeno de la Formación Bahía Inglesa, Chile1
- A new Neogene marine avian assemblage from north-central Chile1
- Les vertebres fossiles de la Formation Pisco (Perou). Premiere parti: Deux nouveaux Monachina (Phocidae, Mammalia) du Pliocene de Sud-Sacaco1
Each of the 13 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Acrophoca
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Jonathan Chen
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Acrophoca”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itLobodontini through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Muizon 1981