The eastern common cuscus (''Phalanger intercastellanus'') is a species of
marsupial
Marsupials are any members of the mammalian infraclass Marsupialia. All extant marsupials are endemic to Australasia, Wallacea and the Americas. A distinctive characteristic common to most of these species is that the young are carried in a ...
in the family
Phalangeridae
The Phalangeridae are a family of mostly nocturnal marsupials native to Australia, New Guinea, and Eastern Indonesia, including the cuscuses, brushtail possums, and their close relatives. Considered a type of possum, most species are arboreal, ...
found in eastern
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
.
Until recently, it was considered
conspecific
Biological specificity is the tendency of a characteristic such as a behavior or a biochemical variation to occur in a particular species.
Biochemist Linus Pauling stated that "Biological specificity is the set of characteristics of living organis ...
with ''
P. mimicus'', and before that also with ''
P. orientalis''.
The eastern common cuscus was introduced by humans into the
Aru Islands
The Aru Islands Regency ( id, Kabupaten Kepulauan Aru) is a group of about 95 low-lying islands in the Maluku Islands of eastern Indonesia. It also forms a regency of Maluku Province, with a land area of . At the 2011 Census the Regency had a ...
and parts of northern Australia.
References
Possums
Mammals of Papua New Guinea
Mammals described in 1895
Taxa named by Oldfield Thomas
Taxonomy articles created by Polbot
Marsupials of New Guinea
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