Category Archives: Pinnipedia

Devinophoca: Miocene Seal from Slovakia

Arctoidea, Phocidae, Pinnipedia

Believe it or not, during the early Middle Miocene (here, I focus on roughly 16-14 million years ago, but overall it was for a longer period of time), large parts of Slovakia and Eastern Europe were covered by a massive sea called the Paratethys, with Carpathian mountains being just an archipelago within this massive inland water body!

It was in this setting, where numerous fossils of small-sized earless seals (Phocidae) were discovered. In the outskirts of Bratislava, near the peak of Devínska Kobyla, two species of one of these seals were described. Devinophoca claytoni and D. emryi. Together forming a now completely extinct subfamily Devinophocinae that possessed mixed characteristics with the other extant subfamilies of seals.

The holotype skull of Devinophoca emryi, picture from the study: https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/RIPS/article/download/6399/6445/0

Here is shown my reconstruction of D. emryi. It was a seal of rather small size, being close to the Baikal seal. The missing parts of the skeleton and the general appearance is based on bunch of other extant seals such as Phoca, Pusa, Monachus and Neomonachus.

The reconstruction of Devinophoca emryi (skull lenght 11.95 cm)

Althought, it would look a lot like its modern counterparts, D. emryi possesed proportionally smaller skull and longer flippers. The latter might have been an unsuccessful evolutionary adaptadion that led to the eventual demise of this group. It has been suggested that Devinophoca might actually represent a very primitive relict of the common ancestors of other phocid seal species. That would mean that this is how we can imagine some of the first earless seals to look like. It lived in a tropical -subtropical environment of transitional shallow marine waters with coral-reef zones.

A sketch showing a pair of Devinophoca emryi in the Slovakian Central Paratethys.

Seals of the subfamily Phocinae can be divided into 5 exact groups based on morphology and ecology. (Representatives of other subfamilies can also be assigned, but its group can differ based on what criteria are used, as in Medditerrean monk seal (Monachus monachus)). Our seal, Devinophoca emryi, althought not belonging to Phocinae, based on morphology alone, falls exactly into the group 3. It’s reasonable to speculate that it was a bottom feeding seal, preying mostly on invertebrates such as mollusks, crabs, shrimp, amphipods and also fish.

The still-living Ribbon seal also falls into the ecomorphological group 3. Image: Michael Cameron
Devinophoca lived in a tropical-subtropical environment, similar to that of Hawaiian monk seal. Image: Kent Backman

Both species D. emryi and D. claytoni fall into different ecomorphological groups, therefore it is totally possible that they coexisted without any competition and niche overlap (for example hunting in different depths) as it’s also seen in some modern seals.

There is so much that could be additionally said, but for now, my time is up. Hoping to get back to this!

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