Pliophoca Explained

Pliophoca is an extinct genus of seal in the family Phocidae.

Fossil record

This genus is known from late Pliocene (Piacenzian) marine deposits in northern Italy. Numerous disassociated monachine remains from the Lee Creek Mine of North Carolina were assigned by Koretsky and Ray (2008), but Berta et al. (2015) rejected the referral and suggested that they may be distinct, which was confirmed by Dewaele et al. (2018), who erected Auroraphoca for two of the Lee Creek specimens that Koretsky and Ray (2008) assigned to Pliophoca.^{[1] [2]}

This fossil species of seal, ancestor of the Mediterranean monk seal (Monachus monachus) has been found only in late Pliocene (Piacenzian) deposits at Orciano and Volterra in Tuscany. It was a species endemic to the Mediterranean Sea.^{[3] [4]}

Bibliography

• G. Tavani. 1941. Revisione dei resti del pinnipede conservato nel museo di geologia di Pisa. Palaeontographica Italica 40:97-112
• T. A. Demere, A. Berta, and P. J. Adam. 2003. Pinnipedimorph evolutionary biogeography. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 279:32-76
• Roberto Lawley. 1875. Pesci ed altri vertebrati fossili del pliocene toscano. Letta all'adunanza della Società Toscana di Scienze Naturali. Pisa, Tipografia Nistri
• Roberto Lawley. 1876. Nuovi studi sopra ai pesci ed altri vertebrati fossili delle Colline Toscane. Firenze. Tipografia dell’Arte della Stampa.
• R. Ugolini. 1902. Il Monachus albiventer BODD. del pliocene di Orciano. Palaeontographia Italica. Volume VIII. pag. 1-20, tav. I-III [I-III], fig. 1.
• R. Ugolini. 1902. Resti di foche fossili italiane. Atti Soc. Tosc. di Sc. Nat. Pisa, Memorie, vol.XIX, 1902, pag.13, con 1 tav. -

Notes and References

1. A. Koretsky and C. E. Ray. 2008. Phocidae of the Pliocene of eastern USA. Virginia Museum of Natural History Special Publication 14:81-140
2. Leonard Dewaele; Carlos Mauricio Peredo; Pjotr Meyvisch; Stephen Louwye (2018). Diversity of late Neogene Monachinae (Carnivora, Phocidae) from the North Atlantic, with the description of two new species. Royal Society Open Science 5 (3): 172437. doi:10.1098/rsos.172437.
3. https://sites.google.com/site/plioceneitaliano/pliophoca-etrusca Pliocene Italiano - Pliophoca etrusca
4. Annalisa Berta, Sarah Kienlead, Giovanni Bianucci & Silvia Sorbi A Reevaluation of Pliophoca etrusca (Pinnipedia, Phocidae) from the Pliocene of Italy: Phylogenetic and Biogeographic Implications Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology - Volume 35, Issue 1, 2015