Strange Carnivores of Madagascar

Madagascar is the fourth-largest island in the world, almost three times the size of Great Britain, or half again the size of California. We should not be surprised, therefore, that it has a considerable amount of native wildlife. However, it's also noteworthy that it has been an island for a very long time - certainly for far longer than Britain has been.

In fact, Madagascar became an island around 91 million years ago, over 20 million years before even the likes of Tyrannosaurus appeared on the scene. Moreover, this was when it split away from what was then the island of India, with its break from Africa being almost twice as far back in time. But, even if we take that younger date for the beginning of its isolation from any sort of 'mainland', it's well before any of the sort of mammals we would recognise today had evolved. There's no equivalent here of mammoths nipping across the English Channel.