Hippopotamus lemerlei

– Extinct

Taxonomy

Kingdom:	ANIMALIA
Phylum:	CHORDATA
Class:	MAMMALIA
Order:	ARTIODACTYLA
Family:	HIPPOPOTAMIDAE
Scientific Name:	Hippopotamus lemerlei
Species Authority:	Grandidier, 1868
Common Name/s:	MADAGASCAN DWARF HIPPOPOTAMUS (Eng) MALAGASY HIPPO (Eng)

Assessment Information

Red List Category & Criteria:	EX ver 3.1 (2001)
Year Assessed:	2002
Assessor/s:	Pig, Peccary & Hippo Specialist Group
Evaluator/s:	Grubb, P. & Oliver, W.L.R. (Pig, Peccary & Hippo Red List Authority)
Justification:	The youngest 14C date on material from H. lemerlei (collected from Itampolo) is 980 ± 200 rcyrbp (Mahé and Sourdat 1972, Dewar 1984). Nevertheless, the ubiquity of hippo remains in sites of apparently recent vintage and the widespread oral tradition of the hippo-like lalomena (Flacourt 1661) led MacPhee and Flemming (1999) to include this species, and its undated relative H. madagascariensis, in their list of recent extinctions.

Geographic Range

Countries:

Regionally extinct:

Madagascar

Habitat and Ecology

System:

Terrestrial; Freshwater

Bibliography

Bibliography:

Dewar, R.E. 1984. Extinctions in Madagascar: The loss of the subfossil fauna. In: P.S. Martin and R.J. Klein (eds) Quaternary extinctions: A prehistoric revolution. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press. pp: 574-593.

Flacourt, E. 1661. Histoire de la grande isle de Madagascar. Pierre L'Amy, Paris.

MacPhee, R.D.E. and Flemming, C. 1999. Requiem Æternam. The last five hundred years of mammalian species extinctions. In: R.D.E. MacPhee (ed.) Extinctions in Near Time, pp.333-371. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York.

Mahé, J. and Sourdat, M. 1972. Sur l'extinction des vertébrés subfossils et l'ardification du climat dans le Sud-Ouest de Madagascar. Bull. Soc. Géol. France 14:295-309.

Pigs, Peccaries and Hippos Specialist Group. For more information, see the Hippo Specialist Sub Group website

Pigs, Peccaries and Hippos Specialist Group. For more information, see the Specialist Group website

Citation:	Pig, Peccary & Hippo Specialist Group 2002. Hippopotamus lemerlei. In: IUCN 2007. 2007 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. <www.iucnredlist.org>. Downloaded on 04 July 2008.
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