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Pinnipedia Redirected from Pinniped
Pinnipedia is a suborder of the order Carnivora that includes the families:
- Otariidae, the "eared seals" or "walking seals" (sea lions and fur seals)
- Phocidae, the "true seals" or "earless seals"
- Odobenidae, the walruses
There has been some debate in taxonomic circles about whether seals, sea lions, and walruses share a common land ancestor or are the products of convergent evolution. If the latter is the case, "Pinnipedia" would be a paraphyletic grouping with no taxonomic meaning. Recent studies of mitochondrial DNA, however, have lent credence to the monophyletic hypothesis: that is, the evidence is currently on the side of a single-ancestor theory.
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