Conquest of the Post-Anthropocene seas.

 Hello again, it's time for another illustrated post of speculative concepts.

I had read a few times, in popular books about mammal evolution, that the transition to fully aquatic habits can show some convergences that may prove illuminating. For example, the earliest member of the seal and sealion group, looked much like an otter, and that the earliest whales swam like otters before they lost their hind-limbs.

This invariably leads to the question, what will the aquatic mammals of today evolve into, in the future? What if all cetaceans went extinct? Would we have seal evolving into whale-like forms? And otters evolving to be like seals? And mink becoming like sea otters?

This idea has been tried out a few times by other speculative-evolution artists, so I decided to try my own. True seals do not swim like whales or otters, so really, they may evolve into something a bit more strange. They undulate their bodies sideways, with their back-feet forming a fin-like organ.So in this sense, if seals become fully marine, their hind-flippers may fuse into a large mobile, vertical fluke, allowing them to swim somewhat like a fish or Ichthyosaur.

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 There may be generalized, agile nearshore swimmers of relatively small size, no larger than a man.


 
There would be more streamlined, faster predators of the open water, taking the niche of dolphins.
 
 
Specialist deep-divers may rival beaked whales in size, and retain sensitive lips with whiskers, in order to feed on deep-water prey such as squid or lantern-fish.
 
 
Filter-feeding habits similar to crabeater seals may re-emerge, instigating a lineage of neo-seals that approach Mysticeti in habits, but with mouthfuls of lobed teeth instead of baleen.
 



Inevitably, there would be pressure to exploit great swarms of plankton as food, so the jaw would lengthen, giving rise to a longer tooth-row consisting of a greater number of interlocking teeth. From there, giant neo-seals analogous to large baleen whales could evolve, without the need for baleen at all. There would be a great gular pouch under the throat, to allow this pinniped to engulf large volumes of water, in order to strain out the plankton therein.


So that is my little idea for post-Anthropocene seal evolution.

All images, designs and writing on this blog are the property of Timothy Donald Morris, do not use, reproduce, or copy them without my permission.
© Timothy Donald Morris 2024

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