Hundreds of fossils have been discovered at what ’s being called an underwater lemur graveyard in flooded cave off the west seashore of Madagascar — the single expectant dodo collection of extinct jumbo lemur . Today ’s lemursare much little , and these Madagascan primates are some of the most threatened mammal coinage on Earth .
Brooklyn College ’s Alfred RosenbergerandLaurie Godfrey from the University of Massachusettsled an international team of divers on an sashay through a series of three inland caves within Tsimanampesotse National Park at the center of the island nation . Among their prized findings is the tremendous skull ofMegaladapis(pictured above ) , also known as thekoala lemur . As one of the with child of the late extinct giant lemurs , Megaladapisskulls measure up to a pes or about a third of a meter long . They also found fossil belonging toArchaeoindrisorsloth lemur , which may have weighed as much as gorillas .
In plus to lemur both giant and small , the team also found many other out Madagascar natives that died out about a thousand years ago or so : elephant snort , horned crocodile ( pictured decent ) , giant fossa ( a carnivorous mongoose congener ) , as well as extinct hippos , bats , and rodents . " We have a real cross - section,“Rosenberger tell National Geographic , of both " tiny affair and full-grown things . "
Entire skeletons depict barely any damage over the centuries ( millennia even ) provide an unprecedented flavour at their soma and perhaps even the cause of their species ’ fade . In fact , some of the lemurs appeared to have been “ defleshed in place,”Rosenberger adds , with decay slowly revealing their bone over clock time . And thanks to the privateness and preservation offered by their deep , washy tomb , many of these skeletons stayed intact and in good status — a rare affair in mammal palaeontology . “ Nothing ’s bothering them , nothing ’s disturb them,”Godfrey assure The Washington Post . “ A vast cache of fossil like this has never been search before . ”
And how did all these lemurs end up there ? It ’s potential they washed into the cave over many , many years , and or maybe a predator ( like the elephantine fossa ) dragged them in .
" This is the success of just phase one , " Rosenberger says in astatement , adding that it ’s just " the beginning of a complex external project that has a lot of recollective , toilsome workplace in store . " The team should be able to extract deoxyribonucleic acid from the fossils and C day of the month them . Not to observe , all of these specimen were visible on the surface of the cavern floor : They have n’t explored below the sediment . Furthermore , the stalactite and stalagmites in the caves could provide a record of climatical changes , which could help them understand how the environment affect past fauna , the squad excuse in anews firing . They ’re now submit their initial findings for issue . Here ’s an awesome National Science Foundationvideoof the discoveries :
mental image : screenshot / National Science Foundation ( top ) , Brooklyn College ( middle )
