Tympanoctomys Yepes 1940

Tympanoctomys Yepes 1940, Rev. Inst. Bact., 9: 569.

Type Species: Octomys barrerae Lawrence 1941

Species and subspecies: 1 species:

Species Tympanoctomys barrerae Lawrence 1941

Discussion: Considered a synonym of Octomys (see Reig, 1986:408; Corbet and Hill, 1991:204), but Cabrera (1961:516) and Redford and Eisenberg (1992) considered it a separate genus based on very enlarged tympanic bullae. Octomys identified as sister taxon by molecular data (Gallardo and Kirsch, 2001; Honeycutt et al., 2003), however, Mares et al. (2000) suggested Pipanacoctomys and Salinoctomys are the sister taxa. Although demonstrated to be a tetraploid, its chromosomal evolution is more complicated than a simple duplication of the chromosomes of Octomys (Gallardo et al., 1999) .