Myorycteropus africanus, MacInnes, 1956

Lehmann, Thomas, 2009, Phylogeny and systematics of the Orycteropodidae (Mammalia, Tubulidentata), Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 155 (3), pp. 649-702 : 680

SPECIES MYORYCTEROPUS CF. AFRICANUS KENYA

Material: Various cranial and post-cranial elements, usually found isolated, described by MacInnes (1956) and Pickford (1975), or yet unpublished ( NHM M 21542, housed at the NHM, London; KNM MW 184– KNM MW 189; KNM MW 484; KNM MW 537; KNM MW 649; KNM RU 3048–3061; KNM RU 3590; KNM RU 5767, housed at the NMK, Nairobi).

Remarks: The Specimen NHM M 21542 might correspond to the left talus quoted by MacInnes (1956) as ‘unnumbered from R.1 series of Rusinga’. Specimens KNM MW 184– KNM MW 189 (relabelled) correspond to the published specimens KNM MW 84– KNM MW 89 of Pickford (1975). This author also attributed some of these specimens to ‘ O. minutus ’ (but see discussion below).

Locality and age: Rusinga Island and Mfwangano ( Kenya), dated to around 17.8-Mya ( Drake et al., 1988).

Discussion: The material considered here has been exclusively found at Rusinga Island and Mfwangano, where the holotype and paratype of M. africanus were also discovered. These skeletal elements have, however, no counterparts in the hypodigm of the aforementioned species, or are too weathered to display any diagnostic features to help with their determination. Their size and shape are nonetheless close enough to M. africanus to place the material close to that species.