Arctocephalus townsendi

The Guadalupe fur seal is one of eight members of the fur seal genus Arctocephalus. They are the northernmost members of this genus. Sealers reduced the population to just a few dozen by the late 19th century, but the species had recovered to about 10,000 individuals by the late 1990s. Many individuals can be found on Mexico's Guadalupe Island.

Arctocephalus townsendi

Uncredited · Public Domain · 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
Guadalupe fur sealPBDB
Sits inside
ArctocephalusPBDB
Diet
piscivorePBDB, for Otariidae
Life habit
amphibiousPBDB, for Pinnipedia
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
marinePBDB, for Pinnipedia

Time the record covers

At most 129 thousand years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Pleistocene — about 1 of 62 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 61 of 62 occurrences147 ka–126 ka Mya — about 0.0 occurrences126 ka–105 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences105 ka–84 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences84 ka–63 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences63 ka–42 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences42 ka–21 ka Mya — about 0.2 occurrences21 ka–0 Mya — about 61 occurrences629 ka0 Mya

62 occurrences of Arctocephalus townsendi on record, most of them in the Holocene. 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

62 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.

Arctocephalus townsendi and its relatives

Holocene

Where Arctocephalus townsendi and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.

Found in the same rock

22 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 62 sites for Arctocephalus townsendi, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.

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

3 references

Each of the 62 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content2

Picture of Arctocephalus townsendi

Credit
nobody named on the record
Licence
Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

Structured light scan

Licence
In Copyright
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
Specimen
Arctocephalus townsendi · lepblb:AT-CSL-988-281111

Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itArctocephalus through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Merriam 1897)