2018-02-21 13:00:00
A little over a century ago, in 1895, the French naturalist Henri Filhol described the new species Plesiorycteropus madagascariensis from an incomplete skull found in a cave near Belo sur Mer, on the west coast of Madagascar. He cataloged the new species as a relative of the aardvark, which inhabits the savannahs and jungles of sub-Saharan Africa. The scientific name of the species can be translated as “close to the aardvark and Madagascar”. Later, other skull, hip and leg bones were found, and another smaller species was discovered, Plesiorycteropus germainepetterae, named in honor of paleontologist and science writer Germaine Petter.
In 1946, French paleontologist Charles Lamberton reviewed the fossils and ruled out a relationship to the aardvark, although he was unable to identify its position on the mammalian evolutionary tree. He found similarities, in addition to aardvarks, with pangolins, armadillos, and anteaters.
In the 1970s, the American paleontologist Bryan Patterson included it again in the tubulidentates, the group of which the aardvark is the only living representative, and considered that the similarities with pangolins, armadillos, etc., were convergent.
In 1994, British paleontologist Ross McPhee conducted the most extensive comparative analysis to date, and concluded that a new order for this animal needed to be created, since there was no evidence that it was closely related to any of the orders. of extant mammals. He named Plesiorycteropus informally “bibymalagasy”, from the Malagasy words biby, “animal”, and malagasy, “Malagasy”, and created the order Bibymalagasia for it.
This is how the poor animal has been jumping from one group to another until in 2013, biochemist Michael Buckley, from the University of Manchester, was able to sequence the collagen preserved in the bones of Plesiorycteropus and determined that it is related to tenrecs and golden moles. . Precisely these two groups of animals, native to Africa and Madagascar, were formerly classified in the order of Insectivores, with hedgehogs, shrews and moles, but modern molecular phylogeny studies indicate that the similarities between all these animals, equally that those of the bibymalagasy with the aardvark do not reflect their evolutionary relationship, but come from convergent evolution due to their similar ways of life.
There is still a lot we don’t know about bibymalagasy. We know only part of the skeleton, and we have neither jaws, nor teeth, nor complete hands or feet. Nothing indicates that it externally resembled the aardvark. The large nasal bones suggest that their sense of smell is good; on the other hand, the optic nerve canal is narrow; the eyes are probably small, as in tenrecs. Although we do not have jaws, the mandibular fossa, the area of the skull where the jaw articulates, indicates that its bite is not very strong.
The front legs are strong, and the hind legs and tail are long. The fingers are made up of a first phalanx that is shorter than the second, and a narrow, claw-shaped third. The bibymalagasy is a burrowing animal, weighing six to eighteen kilos, which feeds on ants and other insects. It digs the claws of its strong front feet into the ground and pushes back to dig for food. Given its small size, it probably does not forage in termite mounds, as the aardvark does. The vertebrae and pelvis suggest that it can sit upright, and it is probably capable of climbing trees, like some tenrecs.
Plesiorycteropus madagascariensis, the large species, ranged at least through central, western, and southern Madagascar, while remains of the small species, Plesiorycteropus germainepetterae, have only been found in central and perhaps southern Madagascar; in various areas the two species coexisted. According to radiocarbon dating of some bones, it was still in existence around 200 BC It is likely that the destruction of the island’s forests by early settlers caused its extinction.
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