by Mongabay.com on 11
May 2018
The newly described Palawanosorex muscorum, or the
Palawan moss shrew, is known to live only near the peak of Mount Mantalingajan
on Palawan Island in the southern Philippines.
The shrew has a stout body and
broad forefeet with long claws, which it uses to dig through humus on the
forest floor to look for earthworms.
The moss shrew has no close known
relatives in Asia, and how it came to live on Mount Mantalingajan is
a mystery, researchers say.
Scientists have described a new
species of shrew that’s known to live only near the top of Mount
Mantalingajan, the highest mountain on Palawan Island in the southern
Philippines.
The animal was first spotted in
2007 by the late Danilo “Danny” Balete, a Filipino scientist and research
associate at the Field Museum in Chicago, U.S., when his team was surveying the
mountain’s biodiversity. But they could not identify the species. Now, Balete’s
collegues have confirmed that the shrew found near the mountain’s peak is not
just a new species, but belongs to an entirely new genus.
The shrew, dubbed Palawanosorex muscorum, or the Palawan
moss shrew, has a stout body and broad forefeet with long claws, which it
uses to dig through humus on the forest floor to look for earthworms, the
researchers report in a new study published in the Journal of Mammology. The shrew also has a short tail
covered by short, dense fur. By contrast, the Palawan shrew (Crocidura palawanensis), another
species that’s endemic to the Philippines, has a slender body, slender
feet and a very long tail covered with long bristles.
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