Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 3, 2015
Pinnipeds, including true seals, walruses, and sea lions and fur seals, are a widely distributed and diverse clade of semiaquatic marine mammals. There are 33 living species, and more than 50 extinct species have been described from fossils. They have streamlined bodies and four limbs that have evolved into flippers. Males typically mate with more than one female, and the females raise the pups, often born in the spring and summer months. Pinnipeds generally prefer colder waters and spend most of their time in the water, but come ashore to mate, give birth, molt or escape from predators such as sharks and killer whales. Humans have hunted seals since at least the Stone Age, and commercial sealing had a devastating effect on some species from the introduction of firearms through the 1960s. Populations have also been reduced or displaced by accidental trapping and marine pollution. All pinniped species are now afforded some protections under international law. (Full article...)