Myosoricinae Kretzoi 1965

Myosoricinae Kretzoi 1965, Vertebrata Hungarica, 7: 124.

Synonyms: Crocidosoricinae Reumer 1987; Oligosoricini Gureev 1971 .

Genera: 3 genera with 18 species:

Genus Congosorex Heim de Balsac and Lamotte 1956 (2 species)

Genus Myosorex Gray 1837 (14 species with 2 subspecies)

Genus Surdisorex Thomas 1906 (2 species)

Discussion: Kretzoi (1965) based his tribe Myosoricini on Myosorex, an extant genus known to exhibit a number of ancestral characters (Heim de Balsac, 1966 b). Maddalena and Bronner (1992) confirmed its isolated position in a study of allozymes. Jammot (1983) included also fossil taxa and applied the name Myosoricina to an evolutionary lineage. The dental characters that he and Reumer (1987) used to characterise this lineage (which Reumer called Crocidosoricinae) are all present in extant Myosorex, Congosorex, and Surdisorex (Hutterer, 1993 a; Hutterer et al., 2002 b). It remains to be analyzed whether all the fossil and extant genera are related, or whether they only share a few ancestral characters.