Madagascar's Extinct Fauna

Extinct animals of Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion, and nearby islands. Clockwise from right: Reunion White Dodo, Mauritian Common Dodo, Mauritian broad-billed parrot, Mauritian Blue Pigeon, Magaladaptis (Madagascar Giant Lemur), Reunion Solataire (a dodo cousin), Reunion Parrot, Seycelles Giant Tortoise, Mauritian Red Rail, Madagascar Coua, Reunion Crested Starling, Madagascar Elephant Bird, Madagascar Pygmy Hippo

The above painting is from the Time Life Nature Library volume on Africa. All of the animals are now extinct, and only three of them are actually from Madagascar, the rest from nearby islands. These happen to be the most striking and the largest, however: the elephant bird, the pygmy hippo, and the giant lemur Magaladaptis. 

The island of Madagascar once harbored a unique megafauna all its own. It was not originally part of Africa, but split off from the Indian subcontinent, which at the time had to have sported a great assortment of pro-simians from before true monkeys evolved. These became the lemurs, which all belong to the same family, unique to the island, though a few other primitive primates, such as the tarsiers and lorises of Asia, an the galugos of Africa, exist elsewhere. 

Magaladaptis, sometimes called the koala-lemur, because of its general shape and possible life style, reached nearly the size of a gorilla, though other species of similar-sized lemurs have since been discovered. The artist supposes that may have resembled the living indris, today the largest lemur species, and highly endangered. 

The elephant bird

The elephant bird was the heaviest bird of all time, though the moa of New Zealand was even taller. Both species reached the general size of a buffalo. It was endemic to Madagasgar, and its huge eggs are often said to have inspired the roc, a bird of Near-Eastern myth that preyed on elephants!

Madagascar fauna of the Pleistocene, including pygmy hippos, giant lemurs, and giant tortoises

It is a bit of a mystery how the pygmy hippo came to exist on the island, though it seems likely it came from the African mainland. It was a different, though similar, species than the pygmy hippo endemic to the Congo, however. Different species and subspecies of pygmy hippo were once found on the island, as well as one larger species of. 

A pair of Cryptoproca bring down a giant lemur

There was also a giant species of prehistoric fossa, the Cruptoproca Spelea, or cave-fossa, the size of a panther which once roamed the island. As the modern fossa preys upon the myriad of lemur species, its giant counterpart likely preyed on the giant lemur species such as Magaladaptis. The fossa is a type of pro-felid related to civets. it very much resembles what the ancestors of cats must have looked like. 

Another ancient Magaslay predator was a smallish land-croc. All of these animals died out shortly after Madagascar was colonized by humans, the same with the megafauna on all the continents and islands that had never known human predation until a few thousand years ago. Not merely overhunting, but the alterations in the ecosystem, as humans cleared land for agriculture, doomed the giants. 

Almost all Magaslsay fauna is unique to the island. This includes also the tenrecs, a family of hedgehog-like insectivores, and the rufous, ring-tailed mongoose. A unique giant frog, the largest on record named Beelzebufo, was also native, but this creature lived during the dinosaur era, long before Madagascar became an island, and often preyed on dinosaur hatchlings. It was also home to Simosuchus, a Mesozoic land-croc that had evolved into an herbivore. 

The armored skeleton of Simosuchus, an odd herbivorous land-croc that once lived on Madagascar, proof the island realm harbored unique fauna in the very distant past