Rattus sanila Flannery and White, 1991 . Nat. Geog. Res. Explor., 7:102.

TYPE LOCALITY: Bismarck Arch., New Ireland, Balof, site 2 .

DISTRIBUTION: Apparently endemic to New Ireland.

COMMENTS: Represented only by subfossil fragments dated at 3000 before present and older, but may still occur in primary forest, which has not been adequately sampled. Flannery and White (1991) described sanila as a subspecies of R. mordax, but most of the dental measurements of sanila exceed and do not overlap those of even the largest known mordax, suggesting the former to be a separate species, which even Flannery and White acknowledged.