While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• Pinnipeds, which include seals, sea lions, and walruses, live in and around water.
• Pinnipeds are descended not from sea animals but from four-legged, land-dwelling carnivores.
• Canadian paleobiologist Natalia Rybczynski recently found a fossil with four legs, webbed toes, and the skull and teeth of a seal.
• Rybczynski refers to her rare find as a “transitional fossil.”
• The fossil illustrates an early stage in the evolution of pinnipeds from their land-dwelling ancestors.