page_title: Rhinogradentia
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Rhinogradentia / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Hyorhinomys stuempkei, NMV C37196, the Sulawesi snouter.
context_page_description: Rhinogradentia is a fictitious order of mammal invented by German zoologist Gerolf Steiner. Members of the order, known as rhinogrades or snouters, are characterized by a nose-like feature called a "nasorium", which evolved to fulfill a wide variety of functions in different species. Steiner also created a fictional persona, naturalist Harald Stümpke, who is credited as author of the 1957 book Bau und Leben der Rhinogradentia. According to Steiner, it is the only remaining record of the animals, which were wiped out, along with all the world's Rhinogradentia researchers, when the small Pacific archipelago they inhabited sank into the ocean due to nearby atomic bomb testing.
  Successfully mimicking a genuine scientific work, Rhinogradentia has appeared in several publications without any note of its fictitious nature, sometimes in connection with April Fools' Day.
context_section_description: Rhinogradentia is considered one of the best known biological hoaxes and scientific jokes and Steiner's pseudonymous works on the subject continue to be reprinted and translated. The first edition did not explicitly state that it was a hoax, 
  Following the publication of the French translation, George Gaylord Simpson wrote a seemingly serious review which extended the hoax in a 1963 issue of the journal Science, taking issue with the way Stumpke named the animals as "criminal violations of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature". Simpson also noted that Stumpke neglected to include an unrelated mathematical concept, a "rotated matrix".
  Since the book's original publication several scientists and publishers have written about Rhinogradentia as though Steiner's account were true, though it is unclear how many of those who continued and popularized the joke did so intentionally. Wulf Ankle wrote that the order "is not a poetic invention, but has really lived". Rolf Siewing's Zoology Primer lists them as an order of mammal, noting that their existence is doubted. Erich von Holst celebrated the discovery of "a completely new animal world". Timothy E. Lawlor's widely read textbook Handbook to the Orders and Families of Living Mammals, includes an entry for Rhinogradentia that does not acknowledge its fictional nature. The East German Liberal Democratic Newspaper took note of the nuclear demise of the rhinogrades, writing that they would still be alive "had we, the peaceable powers, managed in time to implement widespread disarmament and prohibit the production and testing of nuclear weapons."
  Prior to the publication of Leigh Chadwick's English translation, an abbreviated version ran in the April 1967 edition of Natural History, a magazine published by the American Museum of Natural History. It comprised material from the book's introduction, first chapter, selected descriptions of genera, and the epilogue, and was presented as the lead story, without qualification, by the normally serious publication. The following month, The New York Times ran a story about the snouters on the front page, based on the Natural History article. According to the magazine's editorial director, they had "received more than 100 letters and telegraphs about the snouters, most of them from people who forgot that the article was published on April Fool's Day." Natural History printed several letters to the editor in its June–July issue, and conveyed to the Times the content of several more, ranging from skeptical to fascinated and continuations of the joke. One reader, entomologist Alice Gray, expressed thanks for the article, which enabled her family to identify an animal-shaped metal bracelet from the South Pacific as having been modeled after a "Hoop Snouter", and included a drawing to preserve the record because, she said, it had been melted down with some toy soldiers and a spoon by a young cousin with a new casting set.
  Decades later, papers are still published purporting to continue Stümpke's research or otherwise paying homage to Steiner's hoax. In a 2004 paper in the Russian Journal of Marine Biology, authors Kashkina & Bukashkina claim to have discovered two new marine genera: Dendronasus and an as yet unnamed parasitic taxon. The Max Planck Institute for Limnology announced a new species discovered in Großer Plöner See. On April Fools' Day in 2012, the National Museum of Natural History in France announced the discovery of a wood-eating termite-like genera, Nasoperferator, with a rotating nose resembling a drill.
  Rhinogradentia has been included in a number of museum exhibitions and collections. The National Museum of Natural History's Nasoperferator announcement was accompanied by a two-month exhibit honoring the animals, featuring purported stuffed specimens in its gallery of extinct species. Mock taxidermies of rhinogrades have also been included in an exhibit at the Musée d'ethnographie de Neuchâtel, and in the permanent collections of the Musée zoologique de la ville de Strasbourg and the Salzburg Haus der Natur.
  Three real
caption: Hyorhinomys stuempkei, a real species of shrew rat named for Stümpke
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "4288", "Image ImageLength": "2848", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D300S", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS6 (Macintosh)", "Image DateTime": "2015:11:19 11:19:12", "Image WhitePoint": "[313/1000, 329/1000]", "Image PrimaryChromaticities": "[16/25, 33/100, 21/100, 71/100, 3/20, 3/50]", "Image YCbCrCoefficients": "[299/1000, 587/1000, 57/500]", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "436", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 2, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "1152", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1266", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "9529", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/4", "EXIF FNumber": "16", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "200", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2013:03:04 09:25:04", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2013:03:04 09:25:04", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "2", "EXIF ApertureValue": "8", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "5", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Flash", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "55", "EXIF SubSecTime": "25", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "25", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "25", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2066", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2202", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R03", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1120", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 1, 2]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "82", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "EXIF Gamma": "11/5"}