Portal:Paleontology/Natural world articles/79

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, in the middle of 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. (see more...)