ABSTRACT

The pinniped group known as monk seals include two genera and three species of geographically separated seals: the Mediterranean monk seal (Monachus monachus), the Caribbean monk seal (Neomonachus tropicalis; now extinct), and the Hawaiian monk seal (Neomonachus schauinslandi; Scheel et al. 2014; Fig. 1). Monk seals are considered the most primitive of all living phocid species with anatomical features that are little changed from ancestors that lived more than 14 million years ago (mya; Berta et al. 2015).