MSC 111 Lecture 15: Nekton Marine Mammals Oct 29

• School: University of Miami
• Department: Marine Science
• Course: MSC 111
• Professor: Peterson Larry

Document Summary

Sea lions are brown, bark loudly, walk on land using their large flippers and have visible ear flaps. Seals have small flippers, wriggle on their bellies on land, and lack visible ear flaps. ago. The pinnipeds evolved from arctoid, bearlike, carnivore ancestors roughly thirty million years. Apparently entered the ocean to take advantage of the new and abundant food resources created by an upwelling of colder, nutrient-rich waters along the coasts of europe and north. Phocid seals (earless, or true, seals) and the otariid seals (eared seals and walruses) diverged. Seals and sea lions: from a bearlike or doglike common ancestor about twenty-five million years ago. Pinnipeds are near the top of the ocean food chain with a diet mainly consisting of fish and squid. Diets change as they age, from milk, to small zooplankton, invertebrates to larger fish and even at times birds and other pinnipeds.