Ambondro mahabo

Ambondro mahabo is a mammal from the Middle Jurassic (Bathonian) Isalo III Formation of Madagascar. The only described species of the genus Ambondro, it is known from a fragmentary lower jaw with three teeth, interpreted as the last premolar and the first two molars. The premolar consists of a central cusp with one or two smaller cusps and a cingulum (shelf) on the inner, or lingual, side of the tooth. The molars also have such a lingual cingulum. They consist of two groups of cusps: a trigonid of three cusps at the front and a talonid with a main cusp, a smaller cusp, and a crest at the back. Features of the talonid suggest that Ambondro had tribosphenic molars, the basic arrangement of molar features also present in marsupial and placental mammals. It is the oldest known mammal with putatively tribosphenic teeth; at the time of its discovery it antedated the second oldest example by about 25 million years.

Ambondro mahabo

A.R. Wyss · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
AmbondroPBDB
Diet
insectivorePBDB, for Mammaliaformes
Life habit
scansorialPBDB, for Mammaliaformes
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Mammalia

Time the record covers

At most 2.9 million years on record.

The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 168.2 Mya and 165.3 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.

Middle Jurassic — about 1 of 1 occurrenceMiddle Jurassic168–168 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences168–168 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences168–168 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences168–168 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences168–168 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences168–168 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences168–167 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences167–167 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences167–167 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences167–167 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences167–167 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences167–167 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences167–167 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences167–166 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences166–166 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences166–166 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences166–166 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences166–166 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences166–166 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences166–166 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences166–166 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences166–165 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences165–165 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences165–165 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences168.7 Mya164.8 Mya

1 occurrence of Ambondro mahabo on record, most of them in the Middle Jurassic. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

1 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

1 formation

Isalo IIIb — 16.55°S, 46.98°E

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The named rock units Ambondro mahabo has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Ambondro mahabo and its relatives

Middle Jurassic

Where Ambondro mahabo and its relatives were recorded in the Middle Jurassic.

Found in the same rock

10 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Ambondro mahabo, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

1 reference

Each of the 1 occurrence read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Ambondro mahabo

Credit
A.R. Wyss
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Ambondro mahabo was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itAmbondro through timeFormations of the Middle JurassicThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Flynn et al. 1999