Enaliarctos

Enaliarctos is an extinct genus of pinnipedimorph, and may represent the ancestor to all pinnipeds. The five species in the genus Enaliarctos have been recovered from late Oligocene and early Miocene strata of California and Oregon.

Enaliarctos

Bloopityboop · 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
PinnipedimorphaPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Pinnipedimorpha
Life habit
amphibiousPBDB, for Pinnipedimorpha
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
coastalPBDB, for Pinnipedimorpha

Time the record covers

At least 4.5 million years on record.

The record covers at least 23.04 Mya to 18.5 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 27.3 Mya to 15.98 Mya.

Oligocene — about 4 of 11 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 7 of 11 occurrencesMiocene27–27 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences27–27 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences27–26 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences26–26 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences26–25 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences25–25 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences25–25 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences25–24 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences24–24 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences24–23 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences23–23 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences23–22 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences22–22 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences22–22 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences22–21 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences21–21 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences21–20 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences20–20 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences20–20 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences20–19 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences19–19 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences19–18 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences18–18 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences18–18 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences18–17 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences17–17 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences17–16 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences16–16 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences23.04 Mya18.5 Mya27.8 Mya15.5 Mya

11 occurrences of Enaliarctos 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

11 occurrences

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

5 formations

Nye — 44.65°N, 124.06°WNye — 44.52°N, 124.08°WJewett — 35.49°N, 118.85°WYaquina — 44.51°N, 124.08°WSkooner Gulch — 38.87°N, 123.65°WAstoria — 44.70°N, 124.07°W

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Enaliarctos has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Enaliarctos and its relatives

Miocene

Where Enaliarctos and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.

Found in the same rock

101 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Enaliarctos, 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

4 references

Each of the 11 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 Enaliarctos

Credit
Bloopityboop
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Enaliarctos was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

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 itPinnipedimorpha through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Mitchell and Tedford 1973