Pinniped Pinniped Pinnipeds, commonly known as seals, are a widely distributed and diverse clade of carnivorous, fin-footed, semiaquatic marine mammals. They comprise the extant families Odobenidae (whose only living member is the walrus), Otariidae (the eared seals: sea lions and fur seals), and Phocidae (the earless seals, or true seals). There are 33 extant species of pinnipeds, and more than 50 extinct species have been described from fossils. While seals were historically thought to have descended from two ancestral lines, molecular evidence supports them as a monophyletic lineage (descended from one ancestral line). Pinnipeds belong to the order Carnivora and their
Pinniped Peninsula in 1886. Seal killings continued, and the last reliable report of the animal alive was in 1952. The IUCN declared it extinct in 1996. The Japanese sea lion was common around the Japanese islands, but overexploitation and competition from fisheries drastically decreased the population in the 1930s. The last recorded individual was a juvenile in 1974. As of 2013, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recognizes 35 pinniped species. With the Japanese sea lion and the Caribbean monk seal recently extinct, ten more are considered at risk, as they are ranked "Critically Endangered" (the Mediterranean and Hawaiian