Malagasy Hippopotamus

Malagasy hippopotamus (also known as Malagasy dwarf hippopotamus or Malagasy pygmy hippopotamus) are several species of hippopotamus that lived on the island of Madagascar but are now believed to be extinct.
The animals were very similar to the extant common hippopotamus and pygmy hippopotamus.
The fossil record suggests that at least one species of hippopotamus lived until about 1,000 years ago, and other evidence suggests that the species may have survived until much more recently.
The taxonomy of these animals is not resolved and not widely studied. The various species are believed to have survived into the Holocene era.
Hippos are the only endemic ungulates ever to have lived on Madagascar.
It was first described in the mid-19th century by Alfred Grandidier, who unearthed nearly 50 individual hippos from a dried-up swamp, a few miles from the Mozambique Channel.
The fossil record of the Malagasy hippopotamus is extensive. At least seven hippopotamus bones show unequivocal signs of butchery, suggesting that they survived until humans arrived on Madagascar.
The evidence of humans butchering the hippos also suggests their extinction may have been, in part, due to humans.
It is not known when or exactly how these hippos arrived on the island of Madagascar.
As hippos are semi-aquatic, it is possible that they survived the 400 km trek across the channel, although presumably when the water was shallower and there were perhaps small islands along the way.
Although not well-studied, there is growing acceptance of three species of Malagasy hippopotamus.
A clear relative to the common hippopotamus, Hippopotamus lemerlei was much smaller, roughly the size of the modern pygmy hippopotamus.
Bones of Hippopotamus lemerlei have been dated to about 1,000 years ago radiocarbon years before present.
Choeropsis madagascariensis, also called the Malagasy pygmy hippopotamus, was roughly the same size as Hippopotamus lemerlei and like the modern pygmy hippopotamus; it has eyes on the side of its head rather than high orbits and teeth similar to those of the pygmy hippopotamus.
In 1990, Faure and Guerin described a third species of Malagasy hippopotamus, Hippopotamus laloumena, which was a distinct species.
Although no fossil evidence has been dated within the last 1,000 years, the hippopotamus has been surprisingly common in the oral legends of the Malagasy.
In 1648, Étienne de Flacourt ,the French governor of Madagascar wrote about hearing stories from the Malagasy about an animal called the mangarsahoc which closely resembled the hippopotamus.
In different regions of Madagascar, stories were recorded of the tsy-aomby-aomby, the omby-rano, and the laloumena, all animals that resembled hippopotami, but few other animals on the island.
In 1902, a colonial administrator named Raybaud asserted that stories he heard in the highlands could only be about Malagasy hippos still living as late as 1878.
The strength of these oral traditions led the IUCN to classify the Malagasy hippopotami as recent extinctions.
In the 1990s, villagers in the town of Belo-sur-mer, described an animal that, as recently as 1976, had entered their village, was the size of a cow, was dark pigmented, grunted a lot, and when threatened, fled underwater.
No known animal on Madagascar fits the description but the animal seemed remarkably like a hippopotamus.
In 2019 a non-fossilized skull and tusk were found in Madagascar by biologist Forrest Galante, were dated to less than 200 years old, possibly even surviving into the present day.
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