Tyler's mouse opossum (''Marmosa tyleriana'') is a
South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...
n
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 po ...
of the family
Didelphidae.
It lives in rainforests of the
Guiana Highlands
The Guianas, sometimes called by the Spanish loan-word ''Guayanas'' (''Las Guayanas''), is a region in north-eastern South America which includes the following three territories:
* French Guiana, an overseas department and region of France
* G ...
of southern
Venezuela
Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...
at elevations between 1300 and 2200 m.
The species has only been found on three isolated
tepui
A tepui , or tepuy (), is a table-top mountain or mesa found in South America, especially in Venezuela and western Guyana. The word tepui means "house of the gods" in the native tongue of the Pemon, the indigenous people who inhabit the Gran S ...
s (
Auyantepui,
Marahuaca and
Sarisariñama).
All three of these locations are in protected areas (
Canaima,
Duida-Marahuaca and
Jaua-Sarisariñama national parks).
The Latin species name refers to the habitat in which the opossum was first found, a ''
Tyleria'' forest. In turn, both the genus ''Tyleria'' and the opossum's common name refer to Sidney F. Tyler, an American historian and photographer who helped finance the 1928-29 expedition of the
American Museum of Natural History
The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 inter ...
to the headwaters of the
Orinoco
The Orinoco () is one of the longest rivers in South America at . Its drainage basin, sometimes known as the Orinoquia, covers , with 76.3 percent of it in Venezuela and the remainder in Colombia. It is the fourth largest river in the wor ...
, during which the opossum was discovered.
References
Opossums
Mammals of Venezuela
Endemic fauna of Venezuela
Mammals described in 1931
Fauna of the Tepuis
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