Hippopotamus madagascariensis


Hippopotamus madagascariensis or Choeropsis/Hexaprotodon madagascariensis is a recently extinct species of Malagasy hippopotamus.

Taxonomy

Malagasy hippopotamuses were first discovered in the mid-19th century by Alfred Grandidier, who unearthed nearly 50 individual hippos from a dried-up swamp at Ambolisaka near Lake Ihotry, a few miles from the Mozambique Channel. In 1989, Scandinavian palaeontologist Solweig Stuenes described H. madagascariensis and H. lemerlei from these bones.
It has been classified as a species of pygmy hippopotamus, though similarities may simply be due to convergent evolution. Other Malagasy hippos are classified into the genus Hippopotamus.

Description

Like the modern pygmy hippopotamus, the Malagasy pygmy hippo had eyes on the side of its head rather than high orbits and teeth of the common hippopotamus. The Malagasy pygmy hippo was similarly less aquatic, with many of its fossils found in the forested highlands of Madagascar.
Fossils of both the Malagasy pygmy hippopotamus and H. lemerlei show a cursorial adaptation, distinct from the hippos on the African continent, and they would have been much better runners.

Extinction

Although there have been no remains dating to within the last thousand years, the hippopotamus has been surprisingly common in Malagasy oral legends. In different regions of Madagascar, stories were recorded of the mangarsahoc, the tsy-aomby-aomby, the omby-rano, and the laloumena, all animals that resembled hippopotamuses. The strength of these oral traditions led the International Union for Conservation of Nature to classify H. madagascarensis as recently extinct.
At least seven hippopotamus bones show unequivocal signs of butchery, suggesting that they survived until humans arrived on Madagascar. Humans and hippos may have coexisted for about 2,000 years. It is possible overhunting by humans led to their extinction.