Simone Hoffmann 

　　Department of Anatomical Sciences, Stony Brook University 

　　Room 602, 2.30 PM, Friday 20 March 

　　Vintana sertichi is a gondwanatherian mammal known only from the Upper Cretaceous Maevarano Formation in the Mahajanga Basin of northwestern Madagascar. It is based on a single specimen, a well-preserved and virtually complete cranium. Vintana constitutes the only cranial remains of the poorly known, Gondwanatheria, an enigmatic clade of Cretaceous and Paleogene mammals from South America, Africa, Madagascar, India, and the Antarctic Peninsula. Vintana’s cranial anatomy reveals that it was herbivorous, large-eyed and agile, with well-developed high-frequency hearing and a keen sense of smell. Vintana is the largest known Mesozoic mammaliaform from Gondwana and the second largest known for Mesozoic mammaliaforms, superseded only by the eutriconodont Repenomamus giganticus from the Early Cretaceous of China. Micro-computed tomography greatly facilitated the delineation of sutures and the description of internal morphology, allowing for the first digital reconstruction of the endocranium, inner ear and nasal cavity of a gondwanatherian mammal. Vintana exhibits a mosaic of primitive and derived features, the disparity of which is extreme and probably reflective of a long evolutionary history in geographic isolation.  

　　                                                  脊椎动物演化与人类起源重点实验室&学生会 

　　                                                                              2015.3.18