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The announcement of an intriguing new species of Sirenia (i.e., manatees, dugongs, sea cows) was noted in the December 12, 2009, issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. It is an extinct pygmy sea cow (Eotheroides lambondrano) ~ illustrated above with skull inset ~ from the island of Madagascar. It, thus, would have been a small relative of the Bering Sea’s Steller’s Sea Cow (Hydrodamalis gigas) ~ shown below.
Steller’s Sea Cow, of course, is also considered extinct, but still modern sightings are recorded for that species. Could the Madagascan pygmy sirenian explain reports of cryptids (e.g. merbeings) seen in recent times near Madagascar?Rachel Kaufman of the National Geographic News summarized the new finding, which is given here, in part:
A new species of extinct pygmy sea cow is one of the first fossil mammal species found in Madagascar from the mysterious time period between 80 million years ago and 90,000 years ago, experts say.
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Known from a roughly 40-million-year-old skull and a few ribs, the new species has been named Eotheroides lambondrano, after the Malagasy word for dugong, which translates to “water bushpig.” At about seven feet (two meters) long, the ancient pygmy sea cow was smaller than the modern dugong, which ranges from about 8 to 10 feet (2.4 to 3 meters) in length….E. lambondrano is also unique in that its closest relatives would have lived in what is now India and Egypt, according to the study—making its Madagascan location all the more special….”Madagascar already has a lot of strange beasts, and we now have a glimpse of this species from so far away.”
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