Editing Grey seal (section)

==Taxonomy==
There are two recognized subspecies of this seal:<ref name=msw3>{{MSW3 Wozencraft | pages = | id = 14001036}}</ref>
{| class="wikitable "
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! Image !! Subspecies !!  Distribution
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|[[File:Two seals in the water.jpg|120px]]|| ''Halichoerus grypus grypus'' {{small|Fabricius, 1791}} || Baltic Sea
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|[[File:Farne Grey seal.jpg|120px]]|| ''Halichoerus grypus atlantica'' {{small|Nehring, 1886}}|| western North Atlantic stock (eastern Canada and the northeastern United States), the eastern North Atlantic stock (British Isles, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, the Faroe Islands, and Russia)<ref name="NOAA 2019">{{cite web | title=Gray Seal | website=NOAA | date=2019-07-08 | url=https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/gray-seal | access-date=2021-01-05}}</ref>
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|}

The type specimen of ''H.&nbsp;g.&nbsp;grypus'' ([[University of Copenhagen Zoological Museum|Zoological Museum of Copenhagen]] specimen ZMUC M11-1525, caught in 1788 off the island of [[Amager]], Danish part of the [[Baltic Sea]]) was believed lost for many years, but was rediscovered in 2016, and a DNA test showed it belonged to a Baltic Sea specimen rather than from Greenland, as had previously been assumed (because it was first described in [[Otto Fabricius]]' book on the animals in Greenland: ''Fauna Groenlandica''). The name ''H.&nbsp;g.&nbsp;grypus'' was therefore transferred to the Baltic subspecies (replacing ''H.&nbsp;g.&nbsp;macrorhynchus''), and the name ''H.&nbsp;g.&nbsp;atlantica'' resurrected for the Atlantic subspecies.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Olsen|first1=Morten Tange|last2=Galatius|first2=Anders|last3=Biard|first3=Vincent|last4=Gregersen|first4=Kristian|last5=Kinze|first5=Carl Christian|title=The forgotten type specimen of the grey seal [''Halichoerus grypus'' (Fabricius, 1791)] from the island of Amager, Denmark|journal=Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society|volume=178|issue=3|pages=713–720|date=April 2016|doi=10.1111/zoj.12426|doi-access=free}}</ref>

Molecular studies have indicated that the eastern and western Atlantic populations have been genetically distinct for at least one million years, and could potentially be considered separate subspecies.<ref name=Boskovic1996>{{cite journal | author = Boskovic, R.| year = 1996 | title = Geographic distribution of mitochondrial DNA haplotypes in grey seals (''Halichoerus grypus'') | journal = Canadian Journal of Zoology | volume = 74 | issue = 10 | pages = 1787–1796 | doi = 10.1139/z96-199| bibcode = 1996CaJZ...74.1787B |display-authors=etal}}</ref>