Talk:Long-necked seal

Misidentification/nomen dubium

Allen ("The generic and specific names of some of the Otariidae") considers the specimen a skin of a juvenile eared seal; Gray referred it to Mirounga leonina, assuming the specimen had come from subantarctic waters; later authors assigned it to Arctocephalus australis. The species is almost certainly synonymous, and probably not a Phoca. Even after 1800, all seals were commonly placed in Phoca, irrespective of their actual relationships.

Allen's "History of North American Pinnipeds" gives the J.E.Gray reference mentioned above ("Observations on the Fur-Seals" etc, Ann.Mag.Nat.Hist. 1868, ser.4 vol.1: p.215), and discusses the publication history of the supposed species in some depth. Notably, Phoca mutica is essentially treated as a nomen oblitum.

Lack of obvious claws/fingernails on the flippers, the relatively long neck, and the vestigial outer ear being discussed in the earliest descriptions prove that the specimen cannot have been Phocidae, let alone the modern genus Phoca. Given the fact that only South Atlantic fur-seal colonies were known to Europeans at the time of Grew's description, it is almost certain that it represents one of the first skins of Arctocephalus australis to reach England, possibly distorted during skinning so that the neck (already long in Otariidae, compared to Phocidae) appeared even longer.

The description(s) is/are probably scientifically valid (ICZN Code 73.1.4. - a type specimen was referred to, so it is not a nomen nudum), but what name to apply is not obvious. Phoca mutica was barely ever adopted and 19th-century authors generally used Phoca longicollis, but the taxon was all but forgotten entirely before the nomen oblitum rules were formalized. It is most probably a nomen dubium, and the article needs to reflect this. In particular, the taxobox must be changed to show that the assignement to Phoca is erroneous. 2A02:8071:5BD0:D4C0:0:0:0:7BA0 (talk) 17:46, 31 May 2024 (UTC)