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Nelson's small-eared shrew

species of mammal

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionOct 3, 2025
Entity authorityQ1764634
Source-derived summary

Nelson's small-eared shrew (Cryptotis nelsoni) is a species of mammal in the family Soricidae. It is endemic to eastern Mexico.

The species was discovered by Edward William Nelson and Edward Alphonso Goldman in 1894, who collected a number of specimens from the slopes of the San Martín volcano in the Mexican state of Veracruz. The species was then not recorded again, and thought by many to be extinct, until being rediscovered in the same area in 2004 (as described in 2009). Its biology is essentially unknown. The Nelson's Small-Eared Shrew is considered to be one of the world's 100 most threatened species on the planet. Once thought extinct, they have been recently rediscovered in very small numbers. They live in high altitudes on the side of an inactive volcano. The shrews are tiny (only 10 centimetres long) with brown fur.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Nelson's small-eared shrew” is species of mammal. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Nelson's, small-eared and shrew, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewUseful for establishing the present vocabulary of the subject while preserving a route back to the evidence on which that vocabulary rests. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1894, 2004, 2009—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Nelson's, small-eared and shrew is the immediate research focus.
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The phrase “species of mammal” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 3, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q1764634. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1894, 2004 and 2009.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Nelson's small-eared shrew” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.