The sinkhole karst is pocketed with many collapse sinks that hold miniature sunken forests. Caves in this area are said to have white blind fish . . . Fossil skeletons of lemurs have also been washed into these caves. Artifacts from Arab traders in the eleventh century overlies these deposits, which are sequestered under later Malagasy and French relics. Other limestone areas in the Cretaceous limestones, as well as other Tertiary and quaternary deposits, with reports of caves include the Permian limestones filled with lamp shells and snail fossils near Vohitloa near city of Toliara.
Some basalt is present on the island, but it is unclear if lava tubes are present.
Madagascar is a poor nation that has doubled in population over the last 25 years to 11 million persons speaking both Malagasy and French. Cattle, rice, cloves, vanilla, and coffee as well as minerals including graphite for pencils, gems like beryl, plus a little lead, copper, tantalium, niobium, and zinc are grown for domestic comsumption or mined for export. A free-wheeling socialist country, Madagascar was annex by France in 1896, gaining back its freedom in 1960. The first parks were set aside in 1927 and are fairly numerous, but small. Many, like the pinnacle karst of the Tsingy National Reserve of Bemaraha, are only accessable by scientists studying the natural history, else they be stripped of wood and trampled by cattle.