Gerbillus pyramidum Geoffroy, 1825 . Diet. Class. Hist. Nat. Paris, 7:321.

TYPE LOCALITY: Egypt, Giza Prov .

DISTRIBUTION: Egypt, Nile delta and valley south to N Sudan, oases of Western Desert and SE Eastern Desert (see Osborn and Helmy, 1980:97); possibly Khartoum region in EC Sudan.

SYNONYMS: elbaensis, gedeedus .

COMMENTS: Many authors have viewed this species as ranging extensively from the Sinai throughout North Africa, and containing many synonyms. Lay (1983), however, restricted the distribution of G. pyramidum proper to the region mapped by Osborn and Helmy (1980). Tawill and Niethammer (1989) discussed the morphological and chromosomal identification of a sample from Khartoum as most probably G. pyramidum .