Dendromurinae Alston 1876
Creators: name: Musser, Guy G.
name: Carleton, Michael D.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 1993
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Chordata
Mammalia
Rodentia
Muridae

description: Subfamily Dendromurinae Alston, 1876. Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1876:82. SYNONYMS: Deomyinae, Dendromyinae. COMMENTS: Carleton and Musser (1984) provided diagnosis of the subfamily, general characters, habits, habitats, and other information; summarized historical judgments about relationships of the group, which by 1984 had disassociated dendromurines from murines and either aligned them to "cricetids" or treated them as a separate family (Chaline et al., 1977); and cautioned that more research was required to determine if the dendromurines as currently defined are a natural group or instead a polyphyletic assemblage of specialized relicts evolved from a primitive African muroid stock. The association of dendromurines as a subfamily of Cricetidae was retained by Lindsay (1988). Extant members of Dendromurinae are found only in Subsaharan Africa (Dieterlen, 1971), and the group is represented in parts of that region by Pleistocene, Pliocene, and Miocene fossils (Carleton and Musser, 1984; Conroy et al., 1992; Lavocat, 1978; Senut et al., 1992), and in North Africa by Miocene samples (Lindsay, 1988). But at one time the geographic range of dendromurines extended beyond Africa: examples of <i>Dendromus</i> are recorded from the late Miocene deposits of S Spain, and extinct genera mark the first appearance of dendromurines in the middle Miocene of Pakistan and Thailand (Lindsay, 1988, and references therein).
description: Published as part of <i>Guy G. Musser &amp; Michael D. Carleton, 1993, Order Rodentia - Family Muridae, pp. 501-755 in Mammal Species of the World (2 nd Edition), Washington and London :Smithsonian Institution Press</i> on page 541, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7353098
description: {"references": ["Carleton, M. D., and G. G. Musser. 1984. Muroid rodents. Pp. 289 - 379, in Orders and families of Recent mammals of the world (S. Anderson and J. K. Jones, Jr., eds.). John Wiley and Sons, New York, 686 pp.", "Chaline, J., P. Mein, and F. Petter. 1977. Les grandes lignes d'une classification evolutive des Muroidea. Mammalia, 41: 245 - 252.", "Lindsay, E. H. 1988. Cricetid rodents from Siwalik deposits near Chinji Village. Part I: Megacricetodontinae, Myocricetodontinae and Dendromurinae. Palaeovertebrata, 18: 95 - 154.", "Dieterlen, F. 1971. Beitrage zur Systematik, Okologie und Biologie der Gattung Dendromus (Dendromurinae, Cricetidae, Rodentia), insbesondere ihrer zentralafrikanischen Formen. Saugetierkundliche Mitteilungen, 19: 97 - 132.", "Conroy, G. C., M. Pickford, B. Senut, J. Van Couvering, and P. Mein. 1992. Otavipithecus namibiensis, first Miocene hominoid from southern Africa. Nature, 356: 144 - 148.", "Lavocat, R. 1978. Rodentia and Lagomorpha. Pp. 69 - 89, in Evolution of African mammals (V. J. Maglio and H. B. S. Cooke, eds.). Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 641 pp.", "Senut, B., M. Pickford, P. Mein, G. Conroy, and J. Van Couvering. 1992. Discovery of 12 new Late Cainozoic fossiliferous sites in palaeokarsts of the Otavi Mountains, Namibia. Comptes Rendus de l'Academie des Sciences (Paris), 314 (ser. II): 727 - 733."]}