Odobenus rosmarus
The walrus is a large pinniped marine mammal with discontinuous distribution about the North Pole in the Arctic Ocean and subarctic seas of the Northern Hemisphere. It is the only extant species in the family Odobenidae and genus Odobenus. This species is subdivided into two subspecies: the Atlantic walrus, which lives in the Atlantic Ocean, and the Pacific walrus, which lives in the Pacific Ocean.

Nixette · 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- Also called
- walrusPBDB
- Sits inside
- OdobenusPBDB
- Diet
- insectivorePBDB, for Odobenidae
- Life habit
- amphibiousPBDB, for Pinnipedia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Pinnipedia
Time the record covers
At least 1.7 million years on record.
The record covers at least 1.8 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 2.58 Mya to 0 Mya.
156 occurrences of Odobenus rosmarus on record. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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
156 occurrences- Pleistocene48%
- Holocene52%
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
11 formations
- Ijmuiden Ground Formation4
- Acredale Formation2
- South Bight II Formation1
- Silver Bluff Formation1
- Kempsville Formation1
- Shimonopporo Formation1
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The named rock units Odobenus rosmarus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 141 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Found in the same rock
363 taxa- Ursus maritimus48 sites
- Rangifer tarandus33 sites
- Erignathus barbatus30 sites
- Pusa hispida21 sites
- Cetacea20 sites
- Ovibos moschatus19 sites
- Vulpes lagopus19 sites
- Canis17 sites
- Phoca17 sites
- Phoca hispida17 sites
- Delphinapterus leucas15 sites
- Erignathus15 sites
- Balaena mysticetus13 sites
- Lepus arcticus13 sites
- Pagophilus groenlandica12 sites
- Canis familiaris11 sites
- Branta10 sites
- Larus10 sites
- Phocadae9 sites
- Cepphus grylle8 sites
- Larus hyperboreus8 sites
- Phoca vitulina8 sites
- Somateria mollissima8 sites
- Monodon monoceros7 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 153 sites for Odobenus rosmarus, 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
76 references- Polar bear fossil and archaeological records from the Pleistocene and Holocene in relation to sea ice extent and open water polynyas16
- New records of postglacial walrus and a review of Quaternary marine mammals in New Brunswick13
- First evidence of walrus (Odobenus rosmarus L) in Late Pleistocene Champlain Sea sediments, Quebec10
- A postglacial walrus (Odobenus rosmarus) from Bathhurst Island, Northwest Territories7
- New records of Holocene polar bear and walrus (Carnivora) in the Russian Arctic5
- Archaeology of St. Lawrence Island, Alaska5
- The Pleistocene of North America and its vertebrated animals from the states east of the Mississippi River and from the Canadian provinces east of longitude 95 degrees5
- The evolution of Arctic marine mammals4
- Prehistoric use of ringed seals: a zooarchaeological study from Arctic Canada4
- Quaternary vertebrates of Greenland: A review4
- Fossil appendicular skeletal walrus material from the North Sea and the estuary of the Schelde (Mammalia, Carnivora)3
- New records and AMS radiocarbon dates on Quaternary Walrus (Odobenus rosmarus) from New Brunswick3
Each of the 156 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. 64 further references are not listed. 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 content3
Picture of Odobenus rosmarus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Nixette
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Structured light scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Odobenus rosmarus · nmv:mammalogy:c25810
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Walrus”
- 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 itOdobenus through timeThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)