''Neotherium mirum'' is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

of basal

walrus The walrus (''Odobenus rosmarus'') is a large pinniped marine mammal with discontinuous distribution about the North Pole in the Arctic Ocean and subarctic seas of the Northern Hemisphere. It is the only extant species in the family Odobeni ...

. It was smaller than living forms and it did not have long tusks. Males were larger than females.

Palaeoecology

Stable isotope evidence indicates that in the eastern

North Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...

, ''Neotherium'' had intermediate foraging habits between the nearshore specialist '' Pithanotaria'' and the offshore specialist '' Allodesmus''.

References

Miocene pinnipeds Monotypic prehistoric carnivoran genera Miocene mammals of North America Miocene mammals of Asia Odobenids Fossil taxa described in 1931 Taxa named by Remington Kellogg {{Paleo-carnivora-stub