High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Veratalpa lugdunensiana is a fossil mammal from the Miocene of France. Known from a single astragalus (a footbone), the species was assigned to its own genus, Veratalpa, by Florentino Ameghino in 1905. He placed it in Talpidae, the family of the moles, but in 1974, John Howard Hutchison argued that the astragalus was not talpid and more likely came from a rodent. The astragalus is about 4.5 mm long, broad for a talpid, and has the head oriented farther from the axis of the foot than in talpids.