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The Walrus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 September 2009

Colin Matheson
Affiliation:
National Museum of Wales.
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Extract

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The Walrus is confined to the northern circumpolar regions, its range northward apparently extending to the limit of perpetual ice. Now rare in Iceland, Odobenus rosmarus is stated to be still not unfamiliar in Hudson Bay, Davis Strait, and Baffin Bay north to Ellesmere Land, the coasts of Greenland, Spitsbergen, Novaia Zemlia, and the western part of the north coast of Siberia; in all of which regions, however, persecution has greatly diminished its numbers. The species does not extend along the far eastern part of the north Siberian coast, and Walrus are not met with again until the north-eastern extremity of Siberia is reached. Here the Pacific Walrus, which differs somewhat from that of the Atlantic side and is regarded as a distinct species, Odobenus obesus, is reported from Cape Chelagskai, in longitude 170° E., along the Siberian coast as far as northern Kamschatka south to latitude 60°, also on some of the islands in the Bering Sea, and on the opposite coast of Alaska south to about latitude 55° and eastward to Point Barrow. Here again a long gap along the Arctic coast of North America, from Point Barrow in longitude 158° W. to the western shore of Hudson Bay in longitude 97° W., separates the Pacific from the Atlantic Walrus.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Fauna and Flora International 1950

References

Chief References for Modern Status

Allen, G. M. “Extinct and Vanishing Mammals of the Western Hemisphere.” (Publication of the American Committee for International Wildlife Protection, 1942), pp. 469477.Google Scholar
Bernard, J. F.Journal of Mammalogy, vol. iv (1923), pp. 224–7, and vol. vi (1925), pp. 100–2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanna, G. D.Journal of Mammalogy (1923), pp. 209220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henderson, J., and Craig, E. L. “Economic Mammalogy,” 1932, pp. 245–6, etc.Google Scholar