Sorex thibetanus Kastschenko, 1905 . Izv. Tomsk. Univ., 27:93.

TYPE LOCALITY: "Tsaidam" [NE Tibet] .

DISTRIBUTION: Himalyas and NE Tibet.

COMMENTS: The pygmy shrews of the Himalayas are the subject of controversy. The original description of thibetanus (as a subspecies of minutus) is not very helpful and the holotype in the Tomsk Academy was considered to be lost (Yudin, pers. comm. 1977 to the author); Hutterer (1979) therefore regarded thibetanus as a nomen dubium. Dolgov and Hoffmann (1977) and later Hoffmann (1987) used thibetanus to define a Himalayan species in which they included buchariensis, kozlovi, planiceps, and specimens from Nepal and China reported as minutus by various authors. Hutterer (1979) instead recognized three species, buchariensis, planiceps, and minutus as occurring in the Himalayas and regarded kozlovi and thibetanus as indeterminable. Zaitsev (1988) pointed out differences between buchariensis and thibetanus . Surprisingly, the holotype of thibetanus turned up in the Zoological Museum of Moscow (Baranova et al., 1981) and Hoffmann (1987) reported on its measurements. These did not solve the problem but instead matched well with minutus . The controversy still remains unresolved and can be solved presumably only with new material and a more complete data set. Provisionally all the mentioned forms are listed separately.