Vol. 15 - Deutsches Primatenzentrum

Lemur News Vol. 15, 2010 Page 25
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Inferences about the distant past in Madagascar
Elwyn L. Simons
Duke Lemur Center, Division of Fossil Primates, Dept. Evol.
Anthropology, Duke University, 3705 Erwin Road, Durham,
NC 27705, USA, esimons@duke.edu
From Etienne de Flacourt (1658), the following is an English
translation, from the original French, of an entry in his book
"Histoire de la Grande Isle Madagascar:"
"Tretretretre or Tratratratra. It is a large animal like a calf of
two years old, with a round head and the face of a man: the
fore feet are like those of a monkey (or ape),and the hind feet
also.It has curly (or frizzy) hair,a short tail and ears like those
of a man. It resembles the "Tanacht" described by Ambroise
Paré. It can be seen near the pond of the Lipomami [tribe]
and in that region is where it can be found. It is a highly
solitary animal,the people of that country have a great fear of
it and flee from it as it also does from them." From this context,it
is not clear whether Flacourt actually had seen this animal.
It is well known that in Madagascar village people tend to
name lemurs after the sounds they make, following a sort of
onomatopoeic pattern for animal names such as occurs in
the case of the cuckoo bird in English. For instance, the
ground predator alarm call of species of genus Propithecus is a
loud "si-i-fak!" cry and so the name of this animal in the Malagasy
language is "Sifaka".The mouse lemur makes a chittering
alarm call and has the name "T’sit-sihy".The Avahi,a nocturnal
lemur, has one call that sounds like the word "avahi!" In the
case of Flacourt’s animal the name Tretretretre or Tratratratra
is definitely onomatopoeic and sounds like an alarm
bark–it is not unlike the bark alarm call of the southeastern
Madagascan lemur Propithecus edwardsi,or that of another lemur
related to it, Indri indri, or even the alarm bark of the
chimpanzee.
Hence, I have often considered this term, or name, to be a
"fossil" sound and it seems likely that it would have been a
replication, by members of the Lipomami tribe of the alarm
call of this giant lemur when they told Flacourt about the animal.
The location of the Lipomami region in southeastern
Madagascar is known today (Tattersall,1982).Thus Flacourt’s
name for the animal may be the only known "fossil" sound.
There are frequent references by various scientists all agreeing
that Flacourt must have been describing,in the above passage,
one of the giant extinct lemurs; but which one? All lemurs
have hands and feet like those of monkeys, but wavy
hair is more restricted–mainly to members of the Indriid
group or taxonomic family [this family includes only species
of the extant genera Propithecus,Indri,and Avahi] and incidentally
they all have rounded ears–like those of a man. One
large giant extinct lemur of the south and southwest of the
island is known as Palaeopropithecus ingens and taxonomists
generally agree that genus Palaeopropithecus is related to the
family Indriidae (Orlando et al., 2008), where curly or frizzy
hair occurs. A number of scientists have speculated that
Flacourt’s Tretretretre lemur belonged to the genus Megaladapis
(Tattersall, 1982; Mittermeier et al., 1994), which also
occurs as fossils from the southern part of the island, but
species of this genus have a large snout and could never be
described as having a round head. Moreover, the distal ends
of the nasal bones in species of this genus are elongated and
expanded and, in life, there must have been an expanded or
bulbous nose or even a trunk. Hence, one could never say
that the creature had "a face of a man." Differing from Megaladapis,Palaeopropithecus
ingens does have a rounded humanlike
head with forward directed eyes and a small face.In addition
to all these other features,the living species Indri indri or
babacoot,is the only lemur that has a short tail.In addition to
this,the most complete skeleton of Palaeopropithecus,recovered
by a Duke expedition in 1983, and the only associated
skeleton of this animal ever found includes a sacrum that diminishes
posteriorly and could only hold a very small and
short tail.In opposition to all these conclusions,it can be said
that Palaeopropithecus ingens could not possibly be construed
to have been the size of a calf of two years in age–nor,in fact,
would any of the extinct giant lemurs have been that large.
Nevertheless, it is well known that exaggeration surrounds
stories about such little known animals, and also Malagasy
cattle tend to be small. For these reasons it would appear
that the Tretretretre was a Palaeopropithecus species–a conclusion
also implied by Godfrey and Jungers (2002). A year
later these authors reconfirm the same position (Godfrey
and Jungers, 2003).
Between 1994 and the year 2003 teams from the Duke
Lemur Center excavated fossils at two caves called Akomaka
and Ankilitelo in southwestern Madagascar on the Mikoboka
Plateau north of Tulear. This region is Madagascar’s most
extensive and stratigraphically thickest calcareous plateau.
Discoveries made at both of these caves show that the
southwestern part of the island was inhabited comparatively
recently by several giant lemurs including Palaeopropithecus
ingens and Megaladapis edwardsi. More importantly, these
species lived relatively recently (Godfrey and Jungers, 2002),
as evidenced by radiocarbon dating based on specimens
from Ankilitelo (Megaladapis at 630 ± 50 years B.P. and
Palaeopropithecus, 510 ± 80 years B.P. The latter of these
dates (calculated in 1996) ranged from 1406 to 1566 years
AD and falls into historic times. These are relatively recent
ages,not so far from the date of Flacourt’s observation of the
Tretretretre which could have been at any time after he was
named Governor of Ft.Dauphin Madagascar in 1648;approximately
350 years ago. A more recent date determined in
2008 on a Cryptoprocta bone from Ankilitelo gives a similar
age to that of the Palaeopropithecus, estimated as between
1408 and 1488 (Simons,1997;Muldoon et al.,2009;Muldoon
and Simons, 2007). This suggests that the small mammals
accumulated more or less contemporaneously with the giant
lemurs. [The cave name, Ankilitelo, means "at the three kili
(tamarind) trees" but no such trees grow there now. Mala-