The January 24 session of the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology’s 2019 Speaker Series is a presentation by Dr. Karen Samonds from Northern Illinois University entitled, “The Origins and Evolution of Madagascar’s Modern Vertebrates.”
Madagascar is one of the earth’s biodiversity hotspots with some of the most unique species of animals on the planet. However, these pale in comparison to the diversity of animals that existed on the island in the prehistoric past. Madagascar has a dramatic geological and tectonic history that has greatly shaped today’s plants and animals. The details of how, when, and from where the ancestors of the present-day animals arrived still remain poorly known.
Madagascar has been isolated from all other landmasses for nearly 90 million years, well before the arrival of most of the ancestors of animals currently living there. If these animals were not stranded when the island separated, how did it acquire its unusual animals and plants, especially those with close relatives in distant landmasses?
The Cenozoic Period fossil record (66 million years ago to the present) remains our best source of information about the origins of these groups of animals, but much of this fossil record is missing. Recent palaeontological surveys have produced the first collection of Cenozoic vertebrates from Madagascar, including fishes, sharks, crocodylians, turtles, sea cows, dolphins, and, most significantly, the recent discovery of land-dwelling animals.
Dr. Samond will discuss how fossil discoveries in Madagascar shed light on the island’s evolutionary history, and how the remaining species can be preserved.
The Royal Tyrrell Museum’s Speaker Series talks are free and open to the public. The series is held every Thursday until April 26 at 11:00 a.m. in the Museum auditorium. Speaker Series talks are also available on the Museum’s YouTube channel: youtube.com/c/RoyalTyrrellMuseumofPalaeontology.
