Specimen P 160399 Research Focus, Bayside Fossils - Monk Seal Temporal Ear Bone, Phocidae

Summary

This fossilised ear bone was collected by Tim Flannery at Beaumaris, Victoria in 1976 and it is the most intact fossil seal ear bone found in Australia. It belonged to an extinct monk seal (Monachini) that lived in the region in the late Miocene-early Pliocene (6.24-5.38 million years ago).

Today, monk seals are rare, found only in tropical waters near Hawaii and the Mediterranean Sea, and so were long thought to have evolved in the northern hemisphere. However, along with other evidence from New Zealand, this fossil has shown that the monk seals actually first evolved in the southern hemisphere, and eventually dispersed to the north before going extinct in the south, leaving the relictual tropical species we see today.