Carnivora is an order of placental mammals that have specialized in primarily eating flesh, whose members are formally referred to as carnivorans. The order Carnivora is the sixth largest order of mammals, comprising at least 279 species on every major landmass and in a variety of habitats, ranging from the cold polar regions of Earth to the hyper-arid region of the Sahara Desert and the open seas. Carnivorans exhibit a wide array of body plans, varying greatly in size and shape.
The earless seals, phocids, or true seals are one of the three main groups of mammals within the seal lineage, Pinnipedia. All true seals are members of the family Phocidae. They are sometimes called crawling seals to distinguish them from the fur seals and sea lions of the family Otariidae. Seals live in the oceans of both hemispheres and, with the exception of the more tropical monk seals, are mostly confined to polar, subpolar, and temperate climates. The Baikal seal is the only species of exclusively freshwater seal.
The Mustelidae are a diverse family of carnivoran mammals, including weasels, badgers, otters, polecats, martens, grisons, and wolverines. Otherwise known as mustelids, they form the largest family in the suborder Caniformia of the order Carnivora with about 66 to 70 species in nine subfamilies.
Pinnipeds, commonly known as seals, are a widely distributed and diverse clade of carnivorous, fin-footed, semiaquatic, mostly marine mammals. They comprise the extant families Odobenidae, Otariidae, and Phocidae, with 34 extant species and more than 50 extinct species described from fossils. While seals were historically thought to have descended from two ancestral lines, molecular evidence supports them as a monophyletic group. Pinnipeds belong to the suborder Caniformia of the order Carnivora; their closest living relatives are musteloids, having diverged about 50 million years ago.
Enhydra is a genus of mustelid that contains the sea otter and two extinct relatives. It is the only extant genus of the bunodont otters group, referring to otters with non-blade carnassials with rounded cusps.
Caniformia is a suborder within the order Carnivora consisting of "dog-like" carnivorans. They include dogs, bears, raccoons, and mustelids. The Pinnipedia are also assigned to this group. The center of diversification for the Caniformia is North America and northern Eurasia. Caniformia stands in contrast to the other suborder of Carnivora, the Feliformia, the center of diversification of which was in Africa and southern Asia.
Enaliarctos is an extinct genus of pinnipedimorph, and may represent the ancestor to all pinnipeds. The five species in the genus Enaliarctos have been recovered from late Oligocene and early Miocene strata of California and Oregon.
Ursoidea is a superfamily of arctoid carnivoran mammals that includes the families Subparictidae, Amphicynodontidae, and Ursidae. The last family includes the extant lineages of bears, as well as the extinct Hemicyoninae and Ursavinae.
Kolponomos is an extinct genus of carnivoran mammal that existed in the Late Arikareean North American Land Mammal Age, early Miocene epoch, about 20 million years ago. It was likely a marine mammal. The genus was erected in 1960 by Ruben A. Stirton, a paleontologist at the University of California Museum of Paleontology, Berkeley, for the species K. clallamensis, on the basis of a partial skull and jaw found on the Olympic Peninsula. At the time, Stirton questionably assigned it to Procyonidae, its systematic position remained problematic until the discovery of more fossils including a nearly complete cranium from the original locality of K. clallamensis which helped identify it as part of the group from which pinnipeds evolved.
Musteloidea is a superfamily of carnivoran mammals united by shared characteristics of the skull and teeth. Musteloids are the sister group of pinnipeds, the group which includes seals.
Oligobuninae is an extinct subfamily of the family Mustelidae known from Miocene deposits in North America.
Puijila darwini is an extinct species of stem-pinniped (seal) which lived during the Miocene about 21 to 24 million years ago. About a metre long, the animal had only minimal physical adaptations for swimming. Unlike modern pinnipeds, it did not have flippers and its shape was otter-like, albeit more specialized; its skull and teeth are the features that most clearly indicate that it is a seal.
Arctoidea is a clade of mostly carnivorous mammals which include the extinct Hemicyonidae (dog-bears), and the extant Musteloidea, Pinnipedia, and Ursidae (bears), found in all continents from the Eocene, 46 million years ago, to the present. The oldest group of the clade is the bears, as their CMAH gene is still intact. The gene became non-functional in the common ancestor of the Mustelida. Arctoids are caniforms, along with dogs (canids) and extinct bear dogs (Amphicyonidae). The earliest caniforms were superficially similar to martens, which are tree-dwelling mustelids. Together with feliforms, caniforms compose the order Carnivora; sometimes Arctoidea can be considered a separate suborder from Caniformia and a sister taxon to Feliformia.
Enhydritherium terraenovae is an extinct marine otter endemic to North America that lived during the Miocene through Pliocene epochs from ~9.1–4.9 Ma. (AEO), existing for approximately 4.2 million years.
Enhydriodon is an extinct genus of mustelids known from Africa, Pakistan, and India that lived from the late Miocene to the early Pleistocene. It contains nine confirmed species, two debated species, and at least a few other undescribed species from Africa. The genus belongs to the tribe Enhydriodontini in the otter subfamily Lutrinae. Enhydriodon means "otter tooth" in Ancient Greek and is a reference to its dentition rather than to the Enhydra genus, which includes the modern sea otter and its two prehistoric relatives.
Amphicynodontidae is a probable clade of extinct arctoids. While some researchers consider this group to be an extinct subfamily of bears, a variety of morphological evidence links amphicynodontines with pinnipeds, as the group were semi-aquatic otter-like mammals. In addition to the support of the pinniped–amphicynodontine clade, other morphological and some molecular analyses support bears being the closest living relatives to pinnipeds. According to McKenna and Bell (1997) Amphicynodontinae are classified as stem-pinnipeds in the superfamily Phocoidea. Fossils of these mammals have been found in Europe, North America and Asia. Amphicynodontines should not be confused with Amphicyonids (bear-dogs), a separate family of Carnivora which is a sister clade to arctoids within the caniforms, but which may be listed as a clade of extinct arctoids in older publications.
Semantoridae is an extinct family of stem-pinnipeds with fossils found in France, Kazakhstan, and Canada, dating back to various points in time in the Miocene epoch. Based on their overall anatomy semantorids were not marine specialists, as their elongated bodies, a long tail and robust limbs suggest they were freshwater animals not unlike otters. Indeed, at least some taxa such as Semantor and Potamotherium were initially classified as mustelids closely related to otters.
Enhydrictis is a genus of extinct mustelid, belonging to the subfamily Galictinae. The type species, and best known, is Enhydrictis galictoides from the Pleistocene of Sardinia and Corsica. Some authors attribute species from mainland Eurasia to the genus, but this is disputed, with others considering the genus endemic to Sardinia-Corsica.
Subparictidae is an extinct family of early Paleogene arctoid carnivorans endemic to North America that closely related to bears. They were small, raccoon-like mammals that lived from the Eocene to the early Miocene. This family includes a handful of genera such as Subparictis, Parictis, Nothocyon, and Eoarctos.
