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Sonnerat's shrew

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Species of mammal

Sonnerat's shrew
Sonnerat's illustration, the iconotype
Conservation status
Extinct
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Eulipotyphla
Family: Soricidae
Genus: Diplomesodon
Species: †D. sonnerati
Binomial name
†Diplomesodon sonnerati
Cheke, 2018

Sonnerat's shrew (Diplomesodon sonnerati or Crocidura sonnerati) is a species of shrew that was first described by Pierre Sonnerat from Pondicherry somewhere in 1813.

Description

It was described as being larger than the commoner Suncus murinus and without a musky smell. Males were shiny black with a white band or patch on the middle of the back. Females also had the white patch but were grey. Sonnerat described the shrew as being five and a half inches from the head to the base of the tail and the tail being one inch and one line or 29 mm.

Taxonomy

An artist's depiction

Since no specimen of the species exists, both its taxonomic description and its generic placement remain in question.

The supposed shrew species was given a scientific name by Anthony Cheke which was first published in 2012 but the description was not considered valid by some as the holotype was not explicitly designated (in this case the illustration, as there was no specimen) and it was therefore redescribed in 2018. The species was placed tentatively in the genus Diplomesodon which is nested within Crocidura according to a molecular phylogenetic study. Cheke placed the species tentatively in the genus based on the observation that the only other shrew species with a piebald pattern was in the central Asian species Diplomesodon pulchellum. Considering that no specimen matching the species has ever been found ever since, it is thought that the species has since gone extinct.

References

  1. Cheke, A. (2011). "Sonnerat's Shrew - evidence for a new and possibly extinct species in an early 19th century manuscript (Mammalia: Soricidae)". Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. 108 (published 2012): 95–97.
  2. Dubey, Sylvain; Salamin, Nicolas; Ruedi, Manuel; Barrière, Patrick; Colyn, Marc; Vogel, Peter (2008). "Biogeographic origin and radiation of the Old World crocidurine shrews (Mammalia: Soricidae) inferred from mitochondrial and nuclear genes" (PDF). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 48 (3): 953–963. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2008.07.002. PMID 18657625. S2CID 24678999.
  3. Cheke, A. S.; Hume, J. P. (2018). "The Réunion Fody and Sonnerat's Shrew and the validity of scientifically naming animals described without physical types". Zootaxa. 4382 (3): 592–600. doi:10.11646/zootaxa.4382.3.10. PMID 29689936.
Taxon identifiers
Diplomesodon sonnerati
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