Antechinus stuartii Macleay, 1841

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 : 305

Antechinus stuartii Macleay, 1841

Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. (ser. 1) 8: 242, plate vii. (1 December 1841).

Common name. Brown Antechinus .

Current name. Antechinus stuartii Macleay, 1841 ; following Jackson & Groves (2015).

Neotype. M.5294, designated by Wakefield & Warneke (1967). Male, skull, body in alc., presented by K. A. Hindwood, registered on 8 August 1932. Collection date not given.

Condition. Cranium and dentaries complete, body in alc. in good condition.

Type locality. Waterfall, Royal National Park, Sydney, NSW, Australia.

Comments. Neotype designated by Wakefield & Warneke (1967), who state that Macleay’s original material cannot be located. However, Macleay (1841) states that the only specimen was lost and that his description was based solely on the notes and drawings of Surgeon Stuart. Macleay (1842) corrected his earlier description of the dental formula and determined that the species was a marsupial, not an Insectivore as earlier thought, based on his examination of a skeleton subsequently obtained and prepared by Stuart; he did not indicate whether this specimen included a skin, although we assume that it did not. A skin and skull (with no indication of a skeleton) currently in the collection (PA.602) was originally entered by Palmer as “ Antechinus stuartii , North Shore” and indicated as a gallery mount, though with no details of donor or collector. A subsequent amendment to this entry states “flavipes, type of stuarti”; the author of this entry is unknown but it likely occurred during Troughton’s employment or earlier. The unpublished list of Troughton (1956) lists this specimen as the “ holotype ” of stuartii but this allocation is refuted by Macleay’s original account that denied the existence of a voucher specimen. The type status of PA.602 remains unsubstantiated. We are not aware of any published statement by Troughton that would constitute neotype designation of this specimen.