It may look like a cross between a seal and an otter; but an Arctic fossil could, scientists say, hold the secret of seal evolution in its feet. A skeleton unearthed in northern Canada shows a creature with feet that were probably webbed, but were not flippers.
Writing in the journal Nature, scientists suggest the 23 million-year-old proto-seal would have walked on land and swum in fresh water.
It is the oldest seal ancestor found so far and has been named
Puijila darwini.
Puijila is the term for "young sea mammal" in the Inuktitut language, spoken by Inuit groups in Devon Island where the fossil was found.
And the reference to Charles Darwin honours the famous biologist's contention that land mammals would naturally move into the marine environment via a fresh water stage, just as pinnipeds - seals, sealions and walruses - have apparently done.
"The find suggests that pinnipeds went through a fresh water phase in their evolution," said Natalia Rybczynski from the Canadian Museum of Nature (CMN) in Ottawa, who led the fieldwork.
"It also provides us with a glimpse of what pinnipeds looked like before they had flippers."
'Missing link' fossil seal walked
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