Paradoxurus montanus, KELAART, 1852

Groves, Colin P., Rajapaksha, Channa & Manemandra-Arachchi, Kelum, 2009, The taxonomy of the endemic golden palm civet of Sri Lanka, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 155 (1), pp. 238-251 : 250

PARADOXURUS MONTANUS KELAART, 1852

SRI LANKAN BROWN PALM CIVET

Type: BM 52.5 .9.17, subadult male skin and skull, Newara Eliya , cloud-forest zone of Central Highlands, Sri Lanka .

Diagnosis: Dark, slightly greyish-toned wood-brown, with a yellowish-white tail tip. Underside a paler version of upper side. Skull smaller, narrow with a narrow, pointed muzzle, a lower, flatter braincase, and occipital crest narrows backwards. Coronoid process not strongly curved backwards.

Distribution: Dry zone of Sri Lanka, on present evidence extending to high altitudes in the Knuckles Range, and cloud forest in the Central Highlands. Skulls from the wet zone are somewhat narrower, but with a wider interpterygoid fossa, and may be different; further material – especially of adult specimens – from the cloud forest may show that these populations are also different from those from the dry zone, in which case the cloud-forest animals would retain the name montanus , and lower-altitude taxa would require one or more new names.

CR has live-trapped 12 individuals of this species, as follows.

Knuckles Range: Memure, (1/1), Walpolamulla (1/0), Elukumbura (1/1).

Monaragala: Thabanna (4/1).

Bibila: Lunugala (0/1).

Ratnapura: Sirapagama (0/1).