Podabrus mitchelli Krefft, 1867a

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 : 404

Podabrus mitchelli Krefft, 1867a

Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond. 1866: 433. (25 April 1867).

Common name. White-footed Dunnart.

Current name. Sminthopsis leucopus ferruginifrons ( Gould, 1854) , following Jackson & Groves (2015).

Holotype. PA.657 by subsequent determination. Dried skin, not found, entered in the Palmer Register in c. 1878 and listed as Antechinus mitchelli , the only other data entered by Palmer are: “dry skin in bottle Mitchell’s expedition”.

Comments. Krefft (1867a) states that he had “a single, much mutilated specimen, with a note attached that it came from the great explorer, I found in a heap of rubbish some years ago”. Archer (1981) states that Krefft’s specimen was not found in the AM Collection. We have not located PA.657, which we believe is Krefft’s original specimen, and its fate remains undetermined. Krefft stated that “the skull is perfect” and gave the locality as “interior of New South Wales?”. The original entry by Palmer for PA.657 does not list a skull. Iredale & Troughton (1934) stated that the type was in the AM but there is no entry for this taxon in the unpublished type list of Troughton (1956), a list that appears to have been prepared in the 1930s.