250 Francs CFA Puijila

Puijila darwini, the prehistoric pinniped whose skull this coin commemorates, was discovered in a landlocked Nunavut lake bed in 2007 — a find that rewrote the understood evolutionary transition between terrestrial and aquatic mammals. Senegal has no geographic or paleontological connection to the species whatsoever; this is a Pobjoy Mint-style numismatic product issued under CFA franc authority purely for the collector market, a common arrangement among West African franc-zone states whose mint agreements permit exactly this kind of unrelated commemorative output.