Lagorchestes leichardti Gould, 1853a

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 : 334

Lagorchestes leichardti Gould, 1853a

The Mammals of Australia. Part 5, plate 60. (1 November 1853).

Common name. Spectacled Hare-wallaby.

Current name. Lagorchestes conspicillatus leichardti Gould, 1853a ; following Jackson & Groves (2015), who state that several species could be included within L. conspicillatus . Status unresolved.

Syntypes. (2, by subsequent determination). PA.1103, female adult, skin mount,?skull removed. Krefft (1872e) states that “The skull of the [original] specimen has been removed; it is, however, so much crushed that a fair description of the original form is impossible” and that the premolars and first two molars are “much worn”; M.11347 (= PA.1103½), sex indeterminate, subadult, skull and flat skin, both registered in Palmer Register in c. 1879. Collector(s) not recorded in register.

Condition. PA.1103, the skull could be in the mount, although the tag does not imply this. Skin mount: fur is faded, wire is protruding through tail tip, and pes, left ear tip torn. M.11347, cranium missing entire basicranium posterior to rear of palate and between glenoid fossae, fracture in the right maxilla (in the orbital area). Right dentary missing tip of angular process. Incomplete and damaged part flat skin, missing ventral side of the skin and much of the neck area (head is prepared as a study skin as opposed to a flat skin), missing back limbs, tail is detached, right front limb is detached, right ear is torn.

Type locality. Somewhere between Port Essington and Gulf of Carpentaria but, localized to probably Valley of Lagoons, west of Ingham, Qld, Australia. (J. H. Calaby unpublished data, in Calaby & Richardson, 1988). Calaby believed that Gilbert had collected the taxon at Anthill Creek (pers. comm. to S. Ingleby).

Comments. Gould states that his description was based on two specimens, an adult and subadult, collected on Leichhardt’s Expedition, sent to him from the Australian Museum, but without locality, collector or date of collection. John Gilbert, Gould’s collector on Leichhardt’s Port Essington expedition, was killed on 28 June 1845 near the Valley of Lagoons ( Whittell, 1954). Gould concluded that the specimens were obtained from somewhere between the Gulf of Carpentaria and Port Essington, as he was unable to find any reference to them in Gilbert’s diary. Presumably, the specimens were either collected by Gilbert shortly before his death, were collected by other members of the expedition, or given that there are two specimens, both. According to Krefft (1872e) “Mr Gilbert … secured the animal for the Museum collection”, and gave the distribution as central Qld but does not mention a second specimen. It is not known whether the two syntypes were collected in two different regions or whether the juvenile was the offspring of the adult.