Please answer the following question: Information: - The southern elephant seal ("Mirounga leonina") is one of the two extant species of elephant seals. It is both the largest pinniped and member of the order Carnivora living today, as well as the largest Antarctic seal. The seal gets its name from its great size and the large proboscis of the adult males, which is used to make extraordinarily loud roaring noises, especially during the mating season. Rather larger at average than the male northern elephant seal ("Mirounga angustirostris") (which is 40% lighter) and male walrus ("Odobenus rosmarus") (the average North Pacific bull, of the larger race, is 2.5 times lighter), the adult bull southern elephant seal is without rival the largest carnivoran alive. An average adult male southern elephant seal weighs six to seven times more than the largest terrestrial carnivorans, the polar bear ("Ursus maritimus") and Kodiak bear ("Ursus arctos middendorffi"). - Pinnipeds (from Latin "pinna" "fin" and "pes, pedis" "foot"), commonly known as seals, are a widely distributed and diverse clade of carnivorous, fin-footed, semiaquatic marine mammals. They comprise the extant families Odobenidae (whose only living member is the walrus), Otariidae (the eared seals: sea lions and fur seals), and Phocidae (the earless seals, or true seals). There are 33 extant species of pinnipeds, and more than 50 extinct species have been described from fossils. While seals were historically thought to have descended from two ancestral lines, molecular evidence supports them as a monophyletic lineage (descended from one ancestral line). Pinnipeds belong to the order Carnivora and their closest living relatives are bears and musteloids (weasels, raccoons, skunks and red pandas), having diverged about 50 million years ago. - A genus (genera) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms in biology. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nomenclature, the genus name forms the first part of the binomial species name for each species within the genus. - The Kodiak bear ("Ursus arctos middendorffi"), also known as the Kodiak brown bear, sometimes the Alaskan brown bear, inhabits the islands of the Kodiak Archipelago in southwest Alaska. Its Alutiiq name is "taquka-aq". It is the largest recognized subspecies of brown bear, and one of the two largest bears alive today, the other being the polar bear. - The polar bear ("Ursus maritimus") is a carnivorous bear whose native range lies largely within the Arctic Circle, encompassing the Arctic Ocean, its surrounding seas and surrounding land masses. It is a large bear, approximately the same size as the omnivorous Kodiak bear ("Ursus arctos middendorffi"). A boar (adult male) weighs around , while a sow (adult female) is about half that size. Although it is the sister species of the brown bear, it has evolved to occupy a narrower ecological niche, with many body characteristics adapted for cold temperatures, for moving across snow, ice and open water, and for hunting seals, which make up most of its diet. Although most polar bears are born on land, they spend most of their time on the sea ice. Their scientific name means "maritime bear" and derives from this fact. Polar bears hunt their preferred food of seals from the edge of sea ice, often living off fat reserves when no sea ice is present. Because of their dependence on the sea ice, polar bears are classified as marine mammals; an alternative basis for classification as marine mammals is that they depend on the ocean as their main food source. - The walrus ("Odobenus rosmarus") is a large flippered marine mammal with a discontinuous distribution about the North Pole in the Arctic Ocean and subarctic seas of the Northern Hemisphere. The walrus is the only living species in the family Odobenidae and genus "Odobenus". This species is subdivided into three subspecies: the Atlantic walrus ("O. r. rosmarus") which lives in the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific walrus ("O. r. divergens") which lives in the Pacific Ocean, and "O. r. laptevi", which lives in the Laptev Sea of the Arctic Ocean. - In biology, an organism is any contiguous living system, such as an animal, plant, fungus, archaeon, or bacterium. All known types of organisms are capable of some degree of response to stimuli, reproduction, growth and development and homeostasis. An organism consists of one or more cells; when it has one cell it is known as a unicellular organism; and when it has more than one it is known as a multicellular organism. Most unicellular organisms are of microscopic scale and are thus loosely described as microorganisms. Humans are multicellular organisms composed of many trillions of cells grouped into specialized tissues and organs. - Elephant seals are large , oceangoing earless seals in the genus Mirounga . The two species , the northern elephant seal ( M. angustirostris ) and the southern elephant seal ( M. leonina ) , were both hunted to the brink of extinction by the end of the 19th century , but numbers have since recovered . The northern elephant seal , somewhat smaller than its southern relative , ranges over the Pacific coast of the U.S. , Canada and Mexico . The most northerly breeding location on the Pacific Coast is at Race Rocks , at the southern tip of Vancouver Island in the Strait of Juan de Fuca . The southern elephant seal is found in the Southern Hemisphere on islands such as South Georgia and Macquarie Island , and on the coasts of New Zealand , South Africa , and Argentina in the Peninsula Valdes , which is the fourth - largest elephant seal colony in the world . Fossils of an as yet unnamed species of Mirounga have been found in South Africa , and dated to the Miocene epoch . Elephant seals breed annually and are seemingly faithful to colonies that have established breeding areas . - A proboscis is an elongated appendage from the head of an animal, either a vertebrate or an invertebrate. In invertebrates, the term usually refers to tubular mouthparts used for feeding and sucking. In vertebrates, the term is used to describe an elongated nose or snout. - The northern elephant seal ("Mirounga angustirostris") is one of two species of elephant seal (the other is the southern elephant seal). It is a member of the family" Phocidae" ("true seals"). Elephant seals derive their name from their great size and from the male's large proboscis, which is used in making extraordinarily loud roaring noises, especially during the mating competition. Sexual dimorphism in size is great: The males can grow to and , while the females grow to and . Correspondingly, the mating system is highly polygynous; a successful male is able to impregnate up to 50 females in one season. - Binomial nomenclature (also called binominal nomenclature or binary nomenclature) is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin grammatical forms, although they can be based on words from other languages. Such a name is called a binomial name (which may be shortened to just "binomial"), a binomen or a scientific name; more informally it is also called a Latin name. The first part of the name identifies the genus to which the species belongs; the second part identifies the species within the genus. For example, humans belong to the genus "Homo" and within this genus to the species "Homo sapiens". The "formal" introduction of this system of naming species is credited to Carl Linnaeus, effectively beginning with his work "Species Plantarum" in 1753. But Gaspard Bauhin, in as early as 1623, had introduced in his book "Pinax theatri botanici" (English, "Illustrated exposition of plants") many names of genera that were later adopted by Linnaeus. - Carnivora (from Latin "car" (stem "carn-") "flesh" and "vorre" "to devour") is a diverse order that includes over 280 species of placental mammals. Its members are formally referred to as carnivorans, whereas the word "carnivore" (often popularly applied to members of this group) can refer to any meat-eating organism. Carnivorans are the most diverse in size of any mammalian order, ranging from the least weasel ("Mustela nivalis"), at as little as and , to the polar bear ("Ursus maritimus"), which can weigh up to , to the southern elephant seal ("Mirounga leonina"), whose adult males weigh up to and measure up to in length. Given the information above, choose from the list below the object entity that exhibits the relation 'parent taxon' with the subject 'elephant seal'. Choices: - animal - bear - brown bear - carnivora - elephant seal - homo - odobenidae - odobenus - phocidae - pinna - polar bear - ursus
Answer:
phocidae