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Diversity with a H. SCHÜTZ difference The Natural History of Madagascar edited by Steven M. Goodman & Jonathan P. Benstead University of Chicago Press: 2004. 1,760 pp. $85, £59.50 Tim Flannery Madagascar is perhaps the strangest place on Earth — an island where things can seem beguilingly familiar but on closer inspection take on an utterly alien aspect. Some of Madagascar’s spiny insectivores known as tenrecs look like hedgehogs, but live very unhedgehog-like lives, anointing themselves with toxic chemicals and com- municating by means of an organ of stridu- The giraffe-necked weevil (Trachelophorus giraffa) is one of Madagascar’s myriad bizarre creatures. lation, from which eerie tones emerge, caused by the rattling of quills. Even evo- As exciting as Madagascar’s biodiversity is interest of creatures such as Dracula ants, lution on the island seems to have occurred today,the first humans to step ashore encoun- whose queens subsist by sucking the blood of in the wrong order: elsewhere, rainforests tered an even more extraordinary world. The their larvae, and tales of scientific discovery, commonly represent the ancestral (early date is not definitely known, although it may such as the finding in 1994 of the island’s Tertiary) environment, yet Madagascar’s have been after William the Conqueror crossed only species of Winteraceae (a family of most venerable vegetation is its semi-arid, the English Channel in 1066. Amazingly, the primitive flowering plants), which was last baobab-dominated scrubland. settlers did not come from nearby Africa, but seen in 1909. Until 90 million years ago, Madagascar from southeast Asia. Those lucky pioneers The book also makes it clear that Mada- was part of the supercontinent of Gond- would have seen, among other wonders, the gascar’s biodiversity is under severe threat. wana, and its fossil record, much of it only world’s largest bird (the elephant bird Aepyor- In their chapter on freshwater fishes, John recently revealed, is highly surprising. nis maximus), a lemur the size of a gorilla, a Sparks and Melanie Stiassny note that Palaeontological explorations by creature known as Plesiorycteropus neither had ever “witnessed anything sur- John Flynn and his team (which is so odd that its rela- passing the degree and extent of environ- uncovered rich deposits tionships cannot be defini- mental degradation in Madagascar”, and dating to the mid-Jurassic tively established), giant that “it is likely too late to save all but small H. SCHÜTZ (about 160 million years tortoises and pygmy hip- remnants”of the island’s unique fishes. This ago) that contain the pos. By the fourteenth is particularly tragic given that Madagascar’s remains of the world’s century, most of these fish fauna is highly endemic and that some oldest advanced (tri- were extinct, and today of its fishes are ancient relatives of groups bosphenic) mammal. the largest of Mada- that today dominate elsewhere. And David Krause and gascar’s native land- Despite such gloomy prognostications, co-workers discovered based animals weighs The Natural History of Madagascar provides that, 70 million years less than 10 kilograms. hope for a better future, as it warns of the ago, marsupials and For those who are disastrous losses to come and brims with archaic (non-tribosphenic) serious about getting to innovative ideas about how to stave off mammals shared the newly know this fascinating island, the looming ecological catastrophe. The isolated island with an there is no better resource notion that seems to me to have particular astonishing diversity of Unique to Madagascar: the Malagasy than The Natural History merit is David Burney’s suggestion that dinosaurs and crocodiles, golden frog (Mantella aurantiaca). of Madagascar.It is the ostriches and the Aldabran giant tortoise including a herbivorous closest thing to a compre- (which may be the same species as Mada- crocodilian with flattened teeth and a turtle- hensive natural history of the region ever gascar’s extinct giant tortoise) be returned like skull. produced. Containing detailed accounts of to the Madagascan grasslands, where they All these creatures seem to have become flora, fauna, human ecology and the marine might help to control fire, offer a source of extinct without leaving descendants on the environment, even obscure groups such as meat and act as a focus for tourism. island — the ancestors of Madagascar’s the freshwater diatoms and springtails gain Yet the most encouraging thing about this lemurs and most other living mammals (as some coverage, although puzzlingly there book is surely its large number of Malagasy well as many flying invertebrates and birds) is no chapter on the island’s gymnosperms contributors, for it bespeaks a growing body all arrived by sea during the past 60 million (pines and their relatives). of local expertise in biological sciences and years.There are,however,some truly ancient The extensive tabulated lists accompany- conservation, without which any attempt to endemics, whose ancestors have survived ing many of the systematic accounts will be save the biodiversity of the most extraordi- in situ since the age of dinosaurs — includ- invaluable to specialists, as will the exhaus- nary place on Earth would be doomed. ■ ing reptiles such as the freshwater turtle tive references that complete each major Tim Flannery is director of the South Australian Erymnochelys madagascariensis,whose near- section. Such a book could have been dull, Museum, North Terrace, Adelaide, South est relatives are found in South America. but this volume is rescued by the inherent Australia 5000, Australia.