Noronhomys vespuccii is an extinct rat species from the islands of Fernando de Noronha off northeastern Brazil. Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci may have seen it on his fourth voyage, which took him to Brazil, in 1503. It shares several distinctive characters with Holochilus and related genera within the tribe Oryzomyini.
About Noronhomys in brief
Noronhomys vespuccii is an extinct rat species from the islands of Fernando de Noronha off northeastern Brazil. Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci may have seen it on his fourth voyage, which took him to Brazil, in 1503. Numerous but fragmentary fossil remains of the animal, of uncertain but probably Holocene age, were discovered in 1973 and described in 1999. It shares several distinctive characters with Holochilus and related genera within the tribe Oryzomyini, including high-crowned molars with simplified crown features and the presence of several ridges on the skull which help anchor the chewing muscles. It is a member of the family Cricetidae and subfamily Sigmodontinae, which encompasses hundreds of species found across South America and southern North America. It would have been larger than the black rat, which was common on ships and which Vespcci would have was familiar with, consistent with his description of \”very large rats\”. The fossil remains are now in the United States National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D. C. and in the museum of the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, Rio Grandedo Sul. The generic name combines the name of the island with the Ancient Greek μῦς mys \”mouse\” and the specific name, vespucci, honors Amerigo Vespucci.
It became extinct, perhaps because of the exotic rats and mice introduced by the first explorers of the Island. Its close relatives, including Holchilus and Lundomys, are adapted to a semiaquatic lifestyle, spending much of their time in the water, but features of the NoronHomys bones suggest that it lost its semiaqatic lifestyle after arrival at its remote island. The lizard is probably Trachylepis atlantica and the record of snakes most likely refers to Amphisbaena ridleyi, which is actually an amphisbaenian instead of a snake. The rat is distinct from both other animals used in cladistic analysis to examine its relationships within its tribe, and five other species of Holochilines, Lundysomys and oryzomys. They found that the rat appeared that appeared to be the closest to Holochonha, and that it appeared that it was distinct from the other animals, both other rodents and other animals from the genus Holochlon. It was a fairly large rodent, larger than black rats, and lived on the island of Fernando de Noronha.
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This page is based on the article Noronhomys published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 06, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
