Marcano's solenodon (''Solenodon marcanoi'') is an extinct species of mammal in the family Solenodontidae known only from skeletal remains found on the island of

Hispaniola Hispaniola (, also ; es, La Española; Latin and french: Hispaniola; ht, Ispayola; tnq, Ayiti or Quisqueya) is an island in the Caribbean that is part of the Greater Antilles. Hispaniola is the most populous island in the West Indies, and t ...

(today the

Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic ( ; es, República Dominicana, ) is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean region. It occupies the eastern five-eighths of the island, which it shares with ...

and

Haiti Haiti (; ht, Ayiti ; French: ), officially the Republic of Haiti (); ) and formerly known as Hayti, is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and ...

Etymology

The

specific epithet In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

, ''marcanoi'', is in honor of the Dominican botanist,

entomologist Entomology () is the scientific study of insects, a branch of zoology. In the past the term "insect" was less specific, and historically the definition of entomology would also include the study of animals in other arthropod groups, such as arach ...

herpetologist Herpetology (from Greek ἑρπετόν ''herpetón'', meaning " reptile" or "creeping animal") is the branch of zoology concerned with the study of amphibians (including frogs, toads, salamanders, newts, and caecilians (gymnophiona)) and r ...

speleologist Speleology is the scientific study of caves and other karst features, as well as their make-up, structure, physical properties, history, life forms, and the processes by which they form ( speleogenesis) and change over time (speleomorphology ...

and

researcher Research is "creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness t ...

br>Eugenio de Jesús Marcano Fondeur

Description

The species was smaller than the other extant member of its genus, the

sympatric In biology, two related species or populations are considered sympatric when they exist in the same geographic area and thus frequently encounter one another. An initially interbreeding population that splits into two or more distinct species s ...

Hispaniolan solenodon The Hispaniolan solenodon (''Solenodon paradoxus'') is a small, furry, shrew-like mammal endemic to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola (in the Dominican Republic and Haiti). Like other solenodons, it is a venomous, insect-eating animal that li ...

(''S. paradoxus''). Marcano's solenodon limb bones were comparatively shorter than in ''S. paradoxus'', suggesting smaller size and possibly short stature. Like its congenerics, it probably was a nocturnal, burrowing,

shrew Shrews (family Soricidae) are small mole-like mammals classified in the order Eulipotyphla. True shrews are not to be confused with treeshrews, otter shrews, elephant shrews, West Indies shrews, or marsupial shrews, which belong to diffe ...

-like mammal with a long snout, that fed on insects, earthworms, small reptiles, birds, amphibians, and mammals.

History

The remains were found in association with those from rats of the

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial n ...

Rattus ''Rattus'' is a genus of muroid rodents, all typically called rats. However, the term rat can also be applied to rodent species outside of this genus. Species and description The best-known ''Rattus'' species are the black rat (''R. rattus'' ...

'', which suggests that Marcano's solenodon survived until the time of European colonization of the island, and may have gone extinct due to predation from introduced rodents.

References

Solenodon Mammal extinctions since 1500 Venomous mammals Mammals of the Dominican Republic Mammals of Haiti Endemic fauna of Hispaniola Extinct animals of Haiti Extinct animals of the Dominican Republic Mammals described in 1962 Taxonomy articles created by Polbot {{eulipotyphla-stub