Megalomys audreyae
species of mammal
Megalomys audreyae, known as the Barbudan (?) muskrat or the Barbuda giant rice rat, is an extinct oryzomyine rodent from Barbuda in the Lesser Antilles. Described on the basis of a single mandible (lower jaw) with the first molar missing and an isolated upper incisor, both of uncertain but Quaternary age, it is one of the smaller members of the genus Megalomys. Little is known about the animal, and its provenance and distinction from "Ekbletomys hypenemus", an even larger extinct oryzomyine that also occurred on Barbuda, have been called into question. The toothrow in the lower jaw has a length of 8.7 mm at the alveoli. The third molar is relatively narrow and both the second and third molars have a wide valley between their outer cusps.
History
Remains of Megalomys audreyae were found by John Walter Gregory among cave breccia on Barbuda around 1900. The exact locality is unknown. In his 1901 description of Oryzomys luciae, Charles Immanuel Forsyth Major mentioned the Barbuda animal as another member of the Megalomys group, but he never published a description of the latter. Édouard Louis Trouessart gave the name Oryzomys (Megalomys) majori to it in his Catalogus Mammalium, but he did not describe it and therefore the name is a nomen nudum. In 1926, Arthur Hopwood finally described it and named it Megalomys audreyae after Gregory's wife Audrey, following Major's intention.
“Megalomys audreyae” enters the record as species of mammal. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Megalomys, audreyae and species can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 9, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q2404346. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1900, 1901 and 1926.
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This entry incorporates text from “Megalomys audreyae” 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.