Buka mosaic tail rat
| Buka mosaic tail rat | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Melomys spechti | ||||||||||||
| Flannery & Wickler , 1990 |
The Buka mosaic tail rat ( Melomys spechti ) is an extinct rodent belonging to the genus of the mosaic tail rats . It is only known from subfossil jaw fragments discovered on the island of Buka at the northern end of the Solomon Islands range . The specific epithet honors the Australian paleontologist Jim Specht from the Australian Museum , who carried out extensive studies on the early history of Buka.
The holotype consists of a left upper jaw fragment and part of the left palatal bone . Additional material includes 14 right and 13 left mandibular fragments as well as three left maxillary fragments.
The Buka mosaic tail rat was the largest species of all previously described mosaic tail rats. The length of the three molars is 8.1 to 9.4 mm. They were more massive and wider than those of the closely related bougainville mosaic tail rat ( Melomys bougainville ). The estimated body weight is 200 to 250 g.
The subfossil remains were very rare in the abbey of the Kilu fossil site on Buka Island. However, this does not mean that this species was also rare in nature. The material is dated to an age between 7900 and 9400 years. It is possible that this species survived until around 90 AD (1860 yBP ), since the islanders of the Lapita culture only introduced dogs, pigs, other rats and cuscus to Buka around this time .
literature
- Tim F. Flannery , Stephen Wickler: Quaternary murids (Rodentia: Muridae) from Buka Island, Papua New Guinea, with descriptions of two new species. In: Australian Mammalogy . Vol. 13, 1990, ISSN 0310-0049 , pp. 127-139.