Perameles ecaudatus Ogilby, 1838a ( Ogilby, 1838a )

Parnaby, Harry E., Ingleby, Sandy & Divljan, Anja, 2017, Type Specimens of Non-fossil Mammals in the Australian Museum, Sydney, Records of the Australian Museum 69 (5), pp. 277-420 : 403

Perameles ecaudatus Ogilby, 1838a ( Ogilby, 1838a)

Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond. 1838: 25. (July 1838)

Common name. Pig-footed Bandicoot.

Current name. Chaeropus ecaudatus (W. Ogilby, 1838a) , following Jackson & Groves (2015).

Holotype. Specimen number 35 in the catalogue of Bennett (1837), according to Mahoney & Ride (1988c). The original specimen was collected on 16 June 1836 ( Ogilby, 1838a) and cited as female by Bennett (1837).

Comments. Ogilby (1838a) proposed the species on the basis of drawings and notes supplied by Mitchell, which Ogilby states were based on a specimen that had already been lodged in the AM. Only one specimen was obtained on the Murray River, NSW, by Sir Thomas Mitchell (Mahoney & Ride, 1988c). Krefft (1864a: 35) lists specimen “b”, as a skull of the original specimen obtained by Mitchell, and states ( Krefft, 1870) that he found the skull “10 years ago” but that he had never sighted the skin of Mitchell’s specimen, which he assumed had deteriorated through neglect prior to his curatorship. Ogilby (1892) lists the type as being in the AM Collection, but it is not clear if he actually sighted the specimen or drew from Krefft’s catalogue, given that much of his work appeared to be a desktop study (see Iredale & Troughton, 1934). Troughton (1932d: 179) believed that the holotype had disappeared from the collection.