 Two teeth of Lavanify were discovered in 1995 – 1996 during joint expeditions of the State University of New York , Stony Brook University , and the University of Antananarivo to the late Cretaceous ( mostly Maastrichtian , about 71 to 66 million years ago [ mya ] ) Maevarano Formation of northwestern Madagascar . The two teeth were found in different sites in a white sandstone unit of the Maevarano Formation near the village of Berivotra and have been deposited in the collections of the University of Antananarivo ( specimen UA 8653 ) and Field Museum of Natural History ( specimen FMNH PM 59520 ) . David Krause and colleagues described Lavanify and a sudamericid from India , which they did not name , in a 1997 paper in Nature . These were the first gondwanathere mammals to be found outside of Argentina and provided evidence that the mammal faunas of the different Gondwanan ( southern ) continents were similar to each other . The generic name , Lavanify , means " long tooth " and the specific name , <unk> , means " curved " in Malagasy ; both refer to the teeth 's shape . 
