Tag: Madagascar
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Fossils Where They Don’t Belong? Maybe We Just Didn’t Look Hard Enough
A life reconstruction of Ambondro mahabo, the four-inch-long tribosphenic mammal.Credit…Flynn & Wyss, Scientific American, 2004 The New York Times has an article about an unexpected discovery. In 1996, paleontologists found mammal bones in an unexpected place…. northwestern Madagascar. A tiny 167 million year old jaw fragment from an animal that was out of place by…
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Fossil Reveals Weird, Toothed ‘Toucan’ That Lived Alongside The Dinosaurs
ScienceAlert has a story about a “buck-toothed toucan”. The animal, Falcatakely forsterae, lived about 68 million years ago during the late Cretaceous in what is now modern Madagascar. It was described in a paper in the journal Nature. At less than nine centimetres (3.5 inches) long, the delicate skull of the bird scientists have dubbed Falcatakely forsterae might…
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LiveScience: ‘Tiny bug slayer’ relative of dinosaurs and pterosaurs would have fit in the palm of your hand
LiveScience has a story about a cousin to both dinosaurs and pterosaurs. Kongonaphon kely, meaning “tiny bug slayer”, lived about 237 million years ago, during the Triassic period, in what is now Madagascar. It was discovered in 1998, but just recently described in a paper that appeared in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy…
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LiveScience: Ancient ‘crazy beast’ from Madagascar had mismatched body and teeth from ‘outer space’
LiveScience has a post about a strange mammal from Madagascar. This mammal, called Adalatherium hui, lived about 66 million years ago in what is now northwestern Madagascar. This was the very last of the Cretaceous Period and just before the K-Pg mass extinction. The new fossil is the oldest and only nearly complete specimen of…
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PBS Eons: When Giant Lemurs Ruled Madagascar
PBS Eons has a new episode. It is about the history of lemurs on Madagascar. How did they get there? In what ways did they evolve? What happened to the giants? Just a few thousand years ago, the island of Madagascar was inhabited by giant lemurs. How did such a diverse group of primates…
