Uromys (Leung, 2008)

Cramb, Jonathan, Hocknull, Scott A. & Price, Gilbert J., 2020, Fossil Uromys (Rodentia: Murinae) from Central Queensland, with a Description of a New Middle Pleistocene Species, Records of the Australian Museum (Rec. Aust. Mus.) 72 (5), pp. 175-191 : 188-189

Extinction of Uromys in central Queensland

The majority of rainforest-inhabiting species at Mount Etna became extinct after 280 ka (minimum age of site QML1313). But a small number of rainforest-adapted species, e.g., Dendrolagus sp. (Hocknull et al., 2007) and Antechinus yuna (Cramb & Hocknull, 2010) persisted for some tens of thousands of years, and appear in low numbers in QML1312, dated to 205–170 ka (Hocknull et al., 2007). Uromys aplini is one of these, and is represented by a single specimen in QML1312. The possibility of this specimen being derived from faunal mixing (e.g., a time-averaged or reworked deposit) can be discounted as the assemblage of surviving rainforest taxa shows clear selection of certain species. For example, multiple specimens of Antechinus yuna are present, yet Antechinus yammal is absent, despite these two species being ubiquitous in older rainforest assemblages (Cramb & Hocknull, 2010).

The late survival of U. aplini implies some degree of ecological flexibility, a reasonable proposition in light of the apparent ability of extant U. caudimaculatus to make use of a variety of habitats in north Queensland (Moore, 2008). Despite this adaptability, U. aplini disappeared from the local record prior to deposition of site QML1456 (<80 ka, Price et al., 2015). Uromys caudimaculatus appears intermittently in the lower, older spits of QML1456, before apparently becoming locally extinct soon after 50 ka. The loss of both species may be explicable by an increasingly dry regional climate during the latter part of the Pleistocene and associated replacement of closed-canopy forests by open habitats. Despite a return to more mesic conditions during the Holocene, and deposits representing Holocene-aged accumulations, there is no evidence of Uromys returning to the Mount Etna area.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. The authors wish to thank Kristen Spring and QM geosciences staff for curation of specimens, Heather Janetzki, Sandy Ingleby, Karen Roberts, Ken Aplin, and Fred Ford for access to comparative material, the Willi Hennig Society for providing phylogenetic software, Tyrone Lavery for providing an additional datum, Noel and Jeanette Sands and family for assistance in the field, all staff at Capricorn Caves including the Augusteyn family, for their support of palaeontological research, all researchers, honoraries, and volunteers involved in the Mount Etna project, and Liz Cramb for supporting her husband’s palaeontology habit. Collection of material for this project was supported by the Ian Potter Foundation and ARC Linkage Grant (LP0453664).