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Life reconstruction of Puijila darwini swimming in crater lake.
Reconstruction: Mark A. Klingler/Carnegie Museum of Natural History

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Skeletal illustration of Puijila darwini.
Illustration: Mark A. Klingler/Carnegie Museum of Natural History

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Geographic location of fossil site. a) Devon Island in a polar projection. b) Haughton impact structure on Devon Island.
Illustration: Mark A. Klingler/Carnegie Museum of Natural History

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Puijila darwini skeleton (NUFV 405, holotype). Reconstruction of skeleton showing preserved bones in dark grey.
Illustration: Mark A. Klingler/Carnegie Museum of Natural History

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Puijila darwini skull (NUFV 405, holotype). a) Palatal view of skull; b) lateral view of skull and mandible, left side; c) occlusal view of left mandible. Stippling represents matrix, hatching represents broken bone surface. The images are of three-dimensional scans. The brain case was scanned using computed tomography, whereas all other elements were surface scanned.
Illustration: Canadian Museum of Nature

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Left to right: Dr. Mary Dawson, Elizabeth Ross, and Dr. Natalia Rybczynski work on newly discovered fossil material.
Photo: Martin Lipman

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Expedition leader Dr. Natalia Rybczynski, Canadian Museum of Nature (at right), and Dr. Mary Dawson, curator emeritus with Carnegie Museum of Natural History, examine newly discovered bones.
Photo: Martin Lipman.

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Phylogenetic position of Puijila within Arctoidea. Strict consensus cladogram of the eight most parsimonious trees. See Methods and Supplementary Information for additional details.
Graphic: Mark A. Klingler/Carnegie Museum of Natural History

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Hypothesis of early pinniped evolution based on new Arctic
fossil taxon.
The new taxon, Puijila, is a freshwater semi-aquatic pinniped found in the High Arctic. It is the first fossil evidence to indicate that early pinnipeds existed north of the Arctic Circle. Compared to other fossil pinnipeds with known skeletons, the skeleton of Puijila is least specialized for swimming, suggesting that (unlike modern pinnipeds) it would have been adept at moving over land. The Bering "landbridge", which was intact for most of the history of pinniped evolution, would have functioned as a barrier to marine-adapted pinnipeds. But a Puijila-like ancestor, hunting along shorelines and in freshwaters, could have easily spread southward to give rise to early phocids in the Atlantic and early otariids in the North Pacific. An arctic Puijila-like ancestor could also have given rise to more specialized otter-like carnivores, such as the enigmatic Potamotherium and Semantor.
Graphic: Mark A. Klingler/Carnegie Museum of Natural History

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