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Madagascar is famous today not only for its unique biodiversity, but also for the high levels of endemism of plants and animals. Less appreciated is the fact that, in the recent past, the island had even greater biodiversity with many other endemic animals such as giant lemurs, elephant birds, pygmy hippopotami, tortoises, and crocodiles that have gone extinct within the past 2000 years. The extinction of many of these groups is thought to be the result of both human activities and environmental change. Most research has focused on the lemurs, hippopotami, and elephant birds. Other recently extinct animals, including the Malagasy horned crocodile (Voay robustus), are relatively poorly known. Madagascar’s subfossil crocodylians include two taxa: the extinct V. robustus (the Malagasy horned crocodile) and the extant Crocodylus niloticus. The latter arrived on Madagascar relatively recently and we know little about the habitat preferences, distributions and ecological interactions (if any) of either species during the Holocene. In order to better understand the recent history of crocodylian extinction in Madagascar, we must first identify which species were present and where they were found. We present here a description of subfossil crocodylian material collected from the newly discovered subfossil site of Tsaramody (Sambaina Basin), a high-elevation wetlandenvironment. At 1655 m, it represents the highest elevation subfossil site on the island. Here we describe both cranial (e.g., premaxillary, jugal, and squamosal “horns”) and postcranial elements (e.g., osteoderms). Our research indicates that crocodile material from Tsaramody appears morphologically to belong to V. robustus, the extinct species. However, oval tuberosities on the frontal bone and a triangular extension of the squamosal bone suggest previously unrecognized variation.
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Evolutionary and phylogenetic insights from a nuclear genome sequence of the extinct, giant, “subfossil” koala lemur Megaladapis edwardsi
No endemic Madagascar animal with body mass >10 kg survived a relatively recent wave of extinction on the island. From morphological and isotopic analyses of skeletal “subfossil” remains we can reconstruct some of the biology and behavioral ecology of giant lemurs (primates; up to ∼160 kg) and other extraordinary Malagasy megafauna that survived into the past millennium. Yet, much about the evolutionary biology of these now-extinct species remains unknown, along with persistent phylogenetic uncertainty in some cases. Thankfully, despite the challenges of DNA preservation in tropical and subtropical environments, technical advances have enabled the recovery of ancient DNA from some Malagasy subfossil specimens. Here, we present a nuclear genome sequence (∼2× coverage) for one of the largest extinct lemurs, the koala lemur Megaladapis edwardsi (∼85 kg). To support the testing of key phylogenetic and evolutionary hypotheses, we also generated high-coverage nuclear genomes for two extant lemurs, Eulemur rufifrons and Lepilemur mustelinus , and we aligned these sequences with previously published genomes for three other extant lemurs and 47 nonlemur vertebrates. Our phylogenetic results confirm that Megaladapis is most closely related to the extant Lemuridae (typified in our analysis by E. rufifrons ) to the exclusion of L. mustelinus , which contradicts morphology-based phylogenies. Our evolutionary analyses identified significant convergent evolution between M. edwardsi and an extant folivore (a colobine monkey) and an herbivore (horse) in genes encoding proteins that function in plant toxin biodegradation and nutrient absorption. These results suggest that koala lemurs were highly adapted to a leaf-based diet, which may also explain their convergent craniodental morphology with the small-bodied folivore Lepilemur .
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- PAR ID:
- 10316728
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Volume:
- 118
- Issue:
- 26
- ISSN:
- 0027-8424
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2022117118
