Millardia Thomas, 1911

Guy G. Musser & Michael D. Carleton, 1993, Order Rodentia - Family Muridae, Mammal Species of the World (2 nd Edition), Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 501-755 : 621

Millardia Thomas, 1911 . J. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc., 20:998.

TYPE SPECIES: Golunda meltada Gray, 1837 .

SYNONYMS: Grypomys , Guyia , Millardomys .

COMMENTS: Listed as a distinct genus by Ellerman in 1941, but later as a subgenus of Rattus ( Ellerman, 1961) . By 1969, Millardia was again treated as a genus and thought to be closely related to the Indian Cremnomys ( Misonne, 1969) . Subsequent analyses of morphological features and particularly chromosomal traits has demonstrated the great phylogenetic distance between Rattus and Millardia ( Gadi and Sharma, 1983; Mishra and Dhandra, 1975; Raman and Sharma, 1977). Cytogenetic analyses resulted in a phylogenetic hypothesis isolating Millardia and Cremnomys from other Asian genera ( Gadi and Sharma, 1983). Two species of Millardia , until 1982 thought to be strictly an Asian genus, were recorded from the Pliocene of Ethiopia ( Sabatier, 1982). One of the species is apparently a Millardia but the other was reidentified as an Acomys (Denys, 1990) .