The sea mink was first described as Lutreola macrodon, distinct from the American mink, by Daniel Webster Prentiss, a medical doctor and ornithologist, in 1903 after it became extinct. Prentiss based his description on skull fragments recovered from Native American shell middens in New England. Most sea mink remains, nearly all of them skull fragments, have come from shell middens, but a complete specimen has never been found.[1][2]