08 August 2017
Otters and the Ocean
Due to being found near a coast and looking like their extant descendants, Berta and Morgan's initial description of Enhydritherium was heavily angled toward portraying the skeletal remains as those of a large ancestor of modern otters. Their description was not wrong, of course, and Enhydritherium is known to be one of the largest otters, fossil or extant, that has been recorded. As a large sea mammal Enhydritherium has garnered attention throughout the time that it has been known to science. This has led to a number of studies describing different aspects of the animal's life history. The most all encompassing study discusses, describes, and analyzes the osteology of the otter in order to describe its paleoecology; Lambert 1997. This is a fairly typical order of events in describing fossils and the world in which they lived that, in turn, allows for inferences concerning the interactions of this particular species both intra- and inter-specifically. What helps even more, of course, is the discovery of additional remains. Depending on how and where the remains are recovered, new answers can be found to old questions or new questions can be developed. In the case of the Mexican dental remains that we have seen earlier this week, old hypotheses have been refuted and new hypotheses generated concerning the movement of this otter. Tseng, et al. 2017 refutes old hypotheses of migration that include Arctic and Central American Seaway dispersal of Enhydritherium between what are now Florida and California. A lack of fossil evidence from either region is deemed troubling as supporting evidence of such migratory routes. However, the trans-Mexico route does possess fossil remains and, with a skeleton that appears to support terrestrial travel over long distances, also seems suitable for Enhydritherium.