#paleontoluci

[paleontoluci-blog]

Alright guys, one of the final entries of my journey to discovery.  

Take a look at that first picture.  Get a good look at it.  That is a juvenile femur of Archaeoindrii.  Now look at the second picture.  That odd bone that I’ve posted about.

See how it’s broken on top?  It’s broken on every single side, outlining the entirety of the thing.  Now, take a look here.

There she is, a beauty.  That ‘thing’ is part of a juvenile Archaeoindrii femur.  Think I’m taking a long shot?  Well, compare it to every other subfossil mammal in Madagascar, and think on it for a month.  I didn’t think it would fit anywhere, quite honestly, until I saw those two lines when I drew it out.  Those two red lines, right in the middle of the projected vs found picture, matched perfectly with what the center of the juvenile AND adult looked like.  Same positioning and everything.  It’s diagonal, that’s what tipped me off.  Here’s what I mean:

And here you’ll see a clearer view of the two lines on the small fragment, as shown on a 3D cast:

Bascially, my work was done.  Well, my objective, at least.  I got to spend the next few days presenting my findings at the University of Antananarivo.  Small crowd, but good crowd.  

Now, there are seven specimens of Archaeoindrii out there, and that’s something that I’ll never forget.  My experience in Madagascar, my ‘breakthrough’ find, and knowing I can do whatever I set my mind to.  

One more post, and that’ll be the history of Archaeoindris fontoynontii.  Follow to hear more about it!

Signing off, 

Lucillia the Upcoming Paleontologist

[paleontoluci-blog]

Alright guys, the last installment of my discoveries in Madagascar.  Please see the photo above to appreciate the lengths it took to examine this guy.

So there I was, sitting on my couch at home, when I received an email.  It was my study abroad professor wanting me to do some research on this weird extinct lemur species.  You guessed it, Archaeoindrii.  

She told me she had this bone, (previously discussed and proved) that might be part of it.  Me, being the curious bugger I am, took it on as a challenge.  Open minded, but still apprehensive.

Turns out this guy is the largest guy to live on Madagascar.  Well, of the primates at least.  Madagascar itself used to be lush and beautiful, full of rainforest.  Unfortunately, contrary to popular belief, less than 10% of that rainforest exists today.  Conservations efforts have helped, but it’s not enough.  

Human population is one reason that these rainforests have gone, and with that, lemurs have gone extinct as well.  Including our big guy of interest, Archaeoindrii.  It’s believed that human interaction is why he went extinct.  That, as well as habitat loss.

There’s never enough sob story about Madagascar for me, but I’ll move on nonetheless.  

It took a lot of talking to and special permission to see that skull, the one on top.  I had to write a CV, resume, cover letter, all that jazz to even truly look at it.  

It’s at this museum, Academie Malgache, In Antananarivo, right?  Well once I was there, there was a lot of paperwork involved.  ID checks, everything.  

But at last, I got to examine it.  

Took some measurements, photographed it carefully, turned it over and did it all over again.  You want any angle of that skull, I can whip out a picture.  And probably a measurement too.

Archaeoindrii was a terrestrially roaming creature, but also relied on trees.  So called ‘sloth’ lemur, and the size of a male gorilla.  

So what’d I do in trying to understand this guy?

I went to the only site where those fossils have been produced.  I went to Ampasambazimba. Ah, and here we see a wild Luci digging in the mud:

To my contempt, we found no Archaeoindrii specimens.  Lot’s of hippo, lot’s of elephant bird, even crocodile and tortoise!  But that’s life.  A very wise woman once said,

“Absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence.”

Those words came from my professor, who I consider my mentor.  

The rest has been covered in my previous blog posts, the findings and such.  Check them out, it’s pretty cool!

Now that I’m all nostalgic about it, it’s time for me to stop typing at you about it.  There will for sure be mentions about the whole ordeal in later posts to come.

On to the next adventure.  Before returning to Archaeoindrii at a later date, it’s time to explore another topic...

Terror Birds

Signing off,

Lucillia the Upcoming Paleontologist

[paleontoluci-blog]

In my previous blog post, I mentioned this elusive extinct species...Archaeoindris fontoynontii.  Only six specimens in the entire expanse of Earth have been found, well, seven now...

The top picture is a picture of a specimen at Northern Illinois University.  It is part of a femoral bone, and through my time in Madagascar, working with the six bones that have been found of Archaeoindrii, I was tasked with determining what exactly it was, and where it fit in.  

In the second picture, you’ll see an adult femur of Archaeoindrii.  Simply doesn’t fit, right?  Oh, I assure you, I had my mind set to be proven that it wasn’t the gorilla sized lemur.  I mean, what were the odds?  However, then I found what was in the third picture.

Still, it didn’t look to fit that well.  Okay, time to play process of elimination.  What was found in Madagascar that we already know of?

Pachylemur?  Nope, not that one, too big.

Megaladapis?  Still no, looked at several femurs of that guy before.  

Okay, we can rule out the smaller ones, this thing is rather large.  Next, what other types of mammals have been found?

Hippo?  Absolutely not.  What kind of hippo would that even be?

Elephant bird?  Interesting species that I hope to work more on in the future.  But no.

And we can certainly rule out crocodile.  

Now that I’ve ruled all that out, I’m left with the huge lemur, Archaeoindrii.  Great, now what?  I’ve certainly been thinking about how a new species could have popped up in the paleontological record, but not with one bit of a femur.

Follow and keep reading to know more about my thought process...and what happened to that weird piece of bone!

Signing off,

Lucillia the Upcoming Paleontologist