Lavanify
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Lavanify Temporal range: Late Cretaceous (?Maastrichtian) |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Family: | †Sudamericidae |
| Genus: | †Lavanify |
| Species: | †L. miolaka |
| Binomial name | |
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Lavanify miolaka Krause et al., 1997 |
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Lavanify is a mammalian genus from the late Cretaceous (probably Maastrichtian, about 71 to 66 million years ago) of Madagascar. The only species, L. miolaka, is known from two isolated teeth, one of which is damaged. The teeth were collected in 1995–1996 and described in 1997. The animal is classified as a member of Gondwanatheria, an enigmatic extinct group with unclear phylogenetic relationships, and within Gondwanatheria as a member of the family Sudamericidae. Lavanify is most closely related to the Indian Bharattherium; the South American Sudamerica and Gondwanatherium are more distantly related. Gondwanatheres probably ate hard plant material.
Lavanify had high-crowned, curved teeth. One of the two teeth is 11.2 mm high and shows a deep furrow and, is centered laterally in the crown, a V-shaped area that consists of dentine. The other, damaged, tooth is 9.8 mm high and has at least one deep cavity (infundibulum). Characters shared by the teeth of Lavanify and Bharattherium include the presence of an infundibulum and a furrow; they both also have large, continuous bands of matrix (unbundled hydroxyapatite crystals) between the prisms (bundles of hydroxyapatite crystals) of the enamel, and perikymata—wave-like ridges and grooves in the enamel surface.
Two teeth of Lavanify were discovered in 1995–1996 during joint expeditions of the State University of New York, Stony Brook University, and the University of Antananarivo to the late Cretaceous (mostly Maastrichtian, about 71 to 66 million years ago [mya]) Maevarano Formation of northwestern Madagascar. The two teeth were found in different sites in a white sandstone unit of the Maevarano Formation near the village of Berivotra and have been deposited in the collections of the University of Antananarivo (specimen UA 8653) and Field Museum of Natural History (specimen FMNH PM 59520). David W. Krause and colleagues described Lavanify and a sudamericid from India, which they did not name, in a 1997 paper in Nature. These were the first gondwanathere mammals to be found outside of Argentina and provided evidence that the mammal faunas of the different Gondwanan (southern) continents were similar to each other. The generic name, Lavanify, means "long tooth" and the specific name, miolaka, means "curved" in Malagasy; both refer to the teeth's shape.
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