The fossil record is the most logical place to start when addressing questions of biogeo- graphic origins. Unfortunately, the record of identifiable Malagasy terrestrial mammals from the entire Cenozoic era, the past 65 Myr, is virtually non-existent; it dates back only a few thousand years. The small sample of Malagasy terrestrial mammals from pre-Cenozoic strata does not include any placental mammals and therefore no potential ancestors of the extant taxa. However meagre this negative evidence might be, it suggests that the ancestral stocks arrived on Madagascar well after that landmass had rifted from Africa, and is entirely consist- ent with recent molecular dating of the times of divergence and diversification of each of the extant Malagasy groups. Molecular systematists have concluded that each of the four groups was derived from a single ancestor and that their closest relatives are African. By using statistical methods for estimating divergence ages, they have also concluded that the founding popu- lations of each group probably arrived on the island independently at different times in the early–mid Cenozoic, between about 60 Myr and 20 Myr ago