Hippopotamus laloumena

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Hippopotamus laloumena
Temporal range: Holocene
Scientific classification edit
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Artiodactyla
Family: Hippopotamidae
Genus: Hippopotamus
Species:
†H. laloumena
Binomial name
†Hippopotamus laloumena
Faure and Guerin, 1990

Hippopotamus laloumena is an extinct species of hippopotamus from Holocene Madagascar. H. laloumena was much larger than other Malagasy hippos, but was still somewhat smaller than the common hippopotamus (H. amphibius).[1] However, little is known about the species because it was identified with only a lower jaw and limb bones. It was described in 1990 by French palaeontologists M. Faure and Guerin, the fossils recovered from a site near Mananjary on the east coast of Madagascar. The species name derives from Malagasy laloumena "hippopotamus".[2]

Radiocarbon dating of H. laloumena remains returned dates both before definitive human occupation of Madagascar (2364-2212 BP), and after European contact (1670-1950 and 1639-1945 AD). However, the latter were taken from a skull of dubious provenance and importation from mainland Africa cannot be excluded. Ethnographic data collected in Belo sur Mer include putative eyewitness accounts of a hippo-like animal as recently as 1976.[3]

While clearly different from Madagascar's other two recent hippopotamuses (H. lemerlei and H. madagascariensis), the relationship between H. laloumena and the common hippopotamus is not fully resolved. It is possible H. laloumena is merely the result of hippos sporadically crossing from East Africa to Madagascar during the Quaternary; if true, this would make H. laloumena a junior synonym of H. amphibius.[4] On the other hand, H. laloumena is only known from the east coast, rather than the northern or western coasts which are closer to Africa, and were inhabited by H. lemerlei and H. madagascariensis without overlap with H. laloumena.[5]

References[]

  1. ^ Eltringham, S.K. (1999). The Hippos. Poyser Natural History Series. London: Academic Press. ISBN 978-0-85661-131-5.[page needed]
  2. ^ Faure, M. & Guerin, C. (1990). "Hippopotamus laloumena nov. sp., la troisième éspece d'hippopotame holocene de Madagascar". Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, Série II. 310: 1299–305.
  3. ^ Burney, David A., et al. "A chronology for late prehistoric Madagascar." Journal of Human Evolution 47.1-2 (2004): 25-63.
  4. ^ Van der Geer, A. et al. (2011) Evolution of Island Mammals: Adaptation and Extinction of Placental Mammals on Islands. John Wiley & Sons, 496 pages.
  5. ^ Williams, E. (2017) Hippopotamus. Reaktion Books, 224 pages.


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