Octodontomys

Taxonomy and etymology

Octodontomys, a genus created in 1903 by American zoologist Theodore Sherman Palmer, comes from the Ancient Greekὀκτώ (oktṓ), meaning 'eight', ὀδούς (odoús), meaning 'tooth', and μῦς (mûs), meaning 'mouse'. The genus was created to replace the earlier-used name Neoctodon, which was already in use as a genus of beetles from an 1892 work by entomologist Ernest Marie Louis Bedel. The British zoologist Oldfield Thomas had used the name Neoctodon in his 1901 description of the mountain degu (as the new species Neoctodon simonsi, named in honor of the collector Perry O. Simons), which he corrected to the currently used name, Octodontomys gliroides, in his 1913 article On small mammals collected in Jujuy by Señor E. Budin. Thomas noted that the species was "strikingly different" from members of Octodon, and differentiated it based on its "paler colour, whiter belly, and longer, more bushy tail".