Ancient critter from Madagascar rewrites early mammalian history

Researchers said on Wednesday that they unearthed in Madagascar the fossil of a remarkable creature resembling a big groundhog that lived about 66 million years ago. At about 9 kilograms, it was enormous compared to most other mammals of the Mesozoic Era. It is named Vintana sertichi. “Vintana” means “luck” in the Malagasy language, referring to the fortuitous circumstances behind how it was found. During 2010 excavations in Madagascar, the researchers collected a 68kg block of sandstone chock-full of fish fossils. They used a computerised tomography (CT) scan at Stony Brook University in New York to peer inside. As luck would have it, they saw more than just fish.

It was dawning on me that I was experiencing the most incredible bit of luck I had ever been part of.

Joe Groenke, the technician who was the first to view the CT images

Judging from a wonderfully preserved skull with a bizarre set of features, it was an active plant eater with strong jaws, keen sense of smell, well-developed hearing and terrific eyesight under low-light conditions, the group of scientists shared. Joe Groenke, a technician working with the group of scientists, spent half a year extracting the 12.5-centimetre-long skull from the sandstone, one sand grain at a time. Vintana lived immediately before the dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid that struck Earth, a disaster that paved the way for mammals to dominate the land.

Science groundhog madagascar