Madagascar when was it found

Madagascar is a semi-presidential republic. The public elects a president, who in turn appoints a prime minister to put together a cabinet to advise the president. The prime minister is in charge of the legislative and judicial branches, and creates and executes laws. The president formally represents Madagascar at ceremonies around the world.

Humans have lived in Madagascar only for about 1, years. The first settlers on the island are believed to have arrived from Indonesia in Southeast Asia.

For centuries, many small kingdoms ruled different areas of the island. France invaded the island in In , Madagascar finally became an independent nation. All rights reserved. Personality Quizzes. Funny Fill-In. Amazing Animals. There were gigantic flightless birds called elephant birds. These birds were larger than any other birds - living or extinct.

They were heavier than the famous foot-tall moas of New Zealand. The eggs of elephant birds could hold the fluid contents of about chicken eggs! There were no cats or dogs on Madagascar; rather there were strange primitive carnivores mongooses, civets, and cryptoprocts , including one that weighed more than 10 kilograms. Madagascar's unusual endemism makes it one of the world's top conservation priorities. But its endemic plants and animals continue to suffer from practices such as slash-and-burn agriculture and the harvesting of woody plants for charcoal and timber.

Grasses are often deliberately burned to stimulate the growth of fresh blades to feed the cattle. Wild animals are sometimes also hunted. Because of the tremendous endemicity and wealth of plant and animal species on Madagascar, conservationists believe that forest destruction here may have a greater negative impact on global biodiversity than anywhere else on earth.

Subfossil Finds Cave, marsh, and stream sites have yielded the bones of animals that lived on the great island prior to colonization by humans and during the past two millennia. These subfossil sites, so-called because the bones are too fresh to have become fossilized, provide some direct evidence of the history of the long and slow decimation of Madagascar's wildlife following the arrival of humans.

Recent explorations of some of these subfossil sites by a team from Duke University North Carolina and associated scientists from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and the University of Madagascar in Antananarivo have added enormously to our knowledge of the anatomy and adaptations of Madagascar's paleofauna.

These scientists have explored, among other sites, the kilometers of caves at the Ankarana mountains in northern Madagascar, and a pit called Ankilitelo that descends almost feet deep in southwestern Madagascar. The subfossil sites contain the bones of elephant birds, pygmy hippopotamuses, giant tortoises and at least 17 species of extinct lemurs.

The oldest radiocarbon-dated bones of extinct lemurs are about 12,, years old. The most recent are only years old -- proof that giant lemurs survived human occupation of the island by at least 1, years. There is also some circumstantial evidence that pygmy hippos may have been alive as recently as years ago.

Madagascar Tourism. UN news about Madagascar. Republic of Madagascar Capital: Antananarivo. Mr Rajoelina earlier ran Madagascar as head of an interim authority in Read full media profile.

Image source, Getty Images. French troops suppressed an uprising in Read full timeline.