Hapalotis papuanus Ramsay, 1883

Parnaby, Harry E., Ingleby, Sandy & Divljan, Anja, 2017, Type Specimens of Non-fossil Mammals in the Australian Museum, Sydney, Records of the Australian Museum 69 (5), pp. 277-420 : 405

Hapalotis papuanus Ramsay, 1883

Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S.W. (ser. 1) 8(1): 18, plate 11, figs 1–5. (19 June 1883).

Common name. Mottled-tailed Giant Rat.

Current name. Uromys caudimaculatus ( Krefft, 1867b) , following Groves & Flannery (1994).

Holotype. Originally a skull and dry skin, based on Ramsay’s original account. Current whereabouts, or fate, unknown. We have not found an AM register entry that might be identified as this taxon.

Type locality. Unknown: no locality given by Ramsay, but generally assumed to be Papua New Guinea.

Comments. Most previous assessments of this taxon have overlooked the likelihood that locality data might not have been associated with the specimen(s) when Ramsay described the holotype. It is likely that Ramsay’s type material was originally housed either in the AM, his private collection, or in William Macleay’s private collection. Another possibility is that it was on loan to Ramsay from the Mason Brothers, a Sydney-based natural history dealership that was handling Goldie’s material during purchase negotiations with the AM throughout c. 1880–1884. In this event, Goldie or his agents might have sold the specimen to an unknown collector. In his introductory remarks, Ramsay (1883) states that he was reporting on bird and mammal specimens collected by Hunstein, a large collection obtained via Mason Brothers, and on material “recently” added to the collections of William Macleay, the latter evidently purchased from Andrew Goldie and obtained either by him or those who collected on his expeditions.

Ramsay did not provide collector or locality information for this rodent, nor did he do so for several bird taxa that he described in the same paper. This might simply have been an oversight by Ramsay, who frequently displayed an ad hoc approach to inclusion of such data in describing new bird taxa. Alternatively, Ramsay might not have known either the identity of the collector or the collecting locality for this specimen. Boles (2012: 224) notes that some of the 1000 or so bird specimens obtained and registered by the AM in March 1883, the “Mason Brothers collection”, had limited accompanying data because the specimen tags had been removed. Mammal specimens were also purchased from Mason Brothers at this time but these appear not to have been registered until some years later. We have not yet located archival lists of mammals purchased by Ramsay during this period.

Thomas (1913) made a passing remark that the type had disappeared. Despite several attempts, Troughton (1937a: 125) failed to locate type material either in the AM or in the Macleay Museum, nor did Groves & Flannery (1994) who also searched both collections. Previous searches presumably were looking for a specimen labelled as being from the Astrolabe Ranges; however, if the type material has no locality data, as we suspect, future searches should focus on specimens without locality data.

Although the type locality has often been cited as “the foot of, and on the slopes of, Mount Astrolabe Range …” (e.g., Troughton, 1937a; Groves & Flannery, 1994), Ramsay’s account does not provide a type locality for this taxon. As noted above, the material reported in the original paper came from a wide range of localities throughout the Papua New Guinea mainland or further afield, e.g., some bird specimens described by Ramsay in the same paper came from the “Island of D’Entrecasteaux”. Ramsay evidently believed that the type specimen came from Papua New Guinea, given the specific name he applied. Further discussion of this issue will be presented elsewhere.