ABSTRACT
It is possible to demonstrate quite close taxonomic relationships among various subfossil and extant Malagasy lemurs. Pachylemur is the lone subfossil member of the Lemuridae; similarly, Megaladapis is the only extinct representative of the Lepilemuridae. One of the most consistent differences between the living and the subfossil members of each family is that of size; the extinct forms tend to be larger than their extant counterparts, and some of the subfossil species are truly giant in comparison to their closest living relatives. As a base line for comparison to the subfossil species, only congeneric extant species or species of very closely related genera were initially grouped together in each of the interspecific analyses. Subsequently, the subfossil genera themselves were grouped interspecifically, either with other subfossil species or with related extant species of prosimians and/or other suggested non-primate mammalian analogues.
