Arctic seal fossil on Dutch beach

This video is about a harp seal pup.

Recently, Arthur Oosterbaan of Ecomare museum on Texel island in the Netherlands found a bone.

He found it on the beach of the Hors, the southern part of Texel. It was a fossil seal’s tibia. Probably, 10,000 to 100,000 years old; so, from the last Ice Age.

Then, much of what is now the North Sea was land. But some parts were sea, and seals lived there. Probably, the fossil bone belonged to a harp seal. This is an Arctic species now. However, in the Pleistocene age it was the most common North Sea seal.

In and around the North Sea, fossil bones of walruses, beluga whales and grey seals have been found as well.

Arctic seals in the Netherlands now: here.

Related articles

• Fishing for fossils in the North Sea
• Common smoothhound shark on Texel island beach
• First grey seal pups of this autumn
• Dutch grey seals, immigrants from Britain
• North Sea coral discovery
• International cave bear symposium in the Netherlands, September 2015

• Texel island wildlife update (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Global warming could spell more bad news for baby seals (csmonitor.com)
• harp seals (animalmaniablog.wordpress.com)
• More than 700 seals counted in Thames Estuary (theguardian.com)