Philippe Taquet described a dome-shaped skull fragment (MNHN.MAJ 4) as a new genus of pachycephalosaur (Majungatholus atopus) in 1979. This was the first report of a pachycephalosaur in the Southern Hemisphere.

In 1993, scientists from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the University of Antananarivo began the Mahajanga Basin Project, a series of expeditions