Meriones arimalius Cheesman and Hinton, 1924

Guy G. Musser & Michael D. Carleton, 1993, Order Rodentia - Family Muridae, Mammal Species of the World (2 nd Edition), Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 501-755 : 555-556

Meriones arimalius Cheesman and Hinton, 1924 . Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 9, 14:554.

TYPE LOCALITY: Saudi Arabia, Yabrin (Jabrin), Djebel Agoula .

DISTRIBUTION: "Northern sands of the Rub al Khali in Saudia Arabia and Oman " ( Harrison and Bates, 1991:297).

COMMENTS: Subgenus Pallasiomys . Ellerman and Morrison-Scott (1951) listed this form as a valid species, but it was later included in M. libycus ( Corbet, 1978c; Harrison and Bates, 1991). Pavlinov et al. (1990:294) reinstated arimalius as a separate species and reviewed its salient characters. Even from the terse description of its diagnostic traits provided by Harrison and Bates (1991:297), who recognized the form as a subspecies of M. libycus , it is evident that arimalius is quite morphologically different from populations of lybicus north of it in Saudia Arabia. The species was also considered distinct by Nadler and Lay (1967).