Pinnipedimorpha is a stem-clade of arctoid carnivorans that is defined to include the last common ancestor of ''

Phoca ''Phoca'' ( ) is a genus of the earless seals, within the family Phocidae, source of the French name for seal, 'phoque'. It now contains just two species, the common seal (or harbour seal) and the spotted seal (or largha seal). Several specie ...

'' and ''

Enaliarctos ''Enaliarctos''From Greek , ''enalios'', of the sea; and , ''arktos'', bear, "referring to the arctoid, including ursid, Carnivora" (Mitchell & Tedford, 1973, p. 218). is an extinct genus of pinnipedimorph, and may represent the ancestor to all ...

'', and all of their descendants of that ancestral taxon. Scientists still debate on which lineage of arctoid carnivorans are the closest relatives to the pinnipedimorphs, being more closely related to musteloids. Below is an overall phylogeny of the taxa covered in the article followed after a composite tree in Berta et al. (2018) and a total-evidence (combined molecular-morphological) dataset in Paterson et al. (2020):

See also

References

Further reading