New species of mouse discovered in Cyprus

29/08/2006 00:00:00 Zoologists believed that all European mammals had been discovered many years ago, but A new species of mammal has been discovered in Cyprus by an archaeozoologist. The new mammal, a species of mouse named Mus cypriacus, was discovered in Cyprus by Dr Thomas Cucchi, a research fellow at Durham University, whose findings recently appeared in the journal Zootaxa.

Dr Cucchi was working in Cyprus looking at the archaeological remains of mice teeth and comparing them with 4 modern day European mice species, in an attempt to work out if the house mouse was the unwanted guest of the human colonization Cyprus some 10,000 years ago.

‘New species of mammal are usually found in biodiversity hot spots such as South East Asia and it was thought that every species of mammal in Europe had been identified. This is why the discovery of a new species of mouse on Cyprus was so unexpected and exciting. To understand the origin of this new mouse I compared its teeth morphology with those of fossil mice collected by palaeontologists. This comparison revealed that this mouse colonised Cyprus several thousand years before the arrival of man.’ said Dr Cucchi.

Mus cypriacus is different to other European mice in that it has a bigger head, ears, eyes and teeth. Genetic tests confirmed that the new mouse was of a different species.

This find showed that an endemic species of mouse survived the arrival of man on the island and now lives side by side with common European house mice, whose ancestors had arrived with man during Neolithic colonisation. This is very unusual as all other endemic mammals of Mediterranean islands died out after the arrival of man apart from 2 species of shrew. This new mouse is thought to be the only endemic rodent still alive, and thus can be considered as a ‘living fossil’.