[2] However, little is known about the species because it was identified with only a lower jaw and limb bones.

It was described in 1990 by French palaeontologists M. Faure and Guerin, the fossils recovered from a site near Mananjary on the east coast of Madagascar.

However, the latter were taken from a skull of dubious provenance and importation from mainland Africa cannot be excluded.

Nevertheless, ethnographic data collected in Belo sur Mer include putative eyewitness accounts of a hippo-like animal as recently as 1976.

[5] Fossils of H. laloumena have been excavated from west and east coasts,[1] and overlap with ranges of other Malagasy hippopotamuses.