It is believed that giant lemurs (megaladapis) became extinct in the Pleistocene, but there are no obvious reasons for this, because predators did not threaten them, and the food supply has remained unchanged to this day. At the same time, the hypothesis of some zoologists that man became the culprit for the death of these animals looks quite convincing, and this happened by historical standards quite recently.
The growth of an adult megaladapis was comparable to that of a short person, the weight was presumably up to 70 kilograms (in the largest species, megaladapis Edwards, the only one in the genus Peloriadapis, according to some sources, up to 140 and even up to 200 kilograms).
It is known that back in the 17th century, one of the French explorers of Madagascar described huge animals with a "human" face, which terrified the aborigines. In particular, in Madagascar, there were legends about the humanoid creatures of the tretretre (or tratratra, the legend was recorded by Etienne de Flacour in 1658) and the Tocandia, which allows developing theories that the population of megaladapis is still preserved in the interior of the island.
Other theories link the story of the tretretra, which has a round human-like head, in contrast to the elongated skull of the megaladapis, with another subfossil lemur, paleopropithecus.
There are radiocarbon dates according to which Edwards' megaladapis still lived in Madagascar by the time the Europeans appeared there in 1504. Perhaps the giant lemur can still be found today in the wilderness of the island's tropical forests. The places where his bones were found are the upper layers of swamps and deposits of lake silt.
Sometimes in the turtles of "fossil" lemurs, a "white jelly-like substance" was found. Some of the bones looked suspiciously fresh.
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Hopefully, a small population of giant lemur still exists, but hope is very slim. Nitrogen analysis may have been distorted by the high nitrogen content of the bog sediments, and the "white jelly-like substance" in lemur turtles may be due to the unusual conservation effect of bog soil.
Remember, in one of the swamps in Denmark, the remains of a man who died several thousand years ago were found? They turned out to be almost untouched by the decay process, and in fact they are several thousand years old!
Local legends and eyewitness accounts of living giant lemurs in Madagascar have been known to researchers for a long time, but it is still difficult to say with complete certainty whether they are based on visual observations or are simply part of folklore.
Considering that man appeared in Madagascar rather late, it can be assumed that some representatives of the Pleistocene fauna, like the giant lemur, survived on the island until relatively recently and died just a few hundred years ago. Or maybe some still exist?