Sonnerat's shrew (''Diplomesodon sonnerati'' or ''Crocidura sonnerati'') is a species of shrew that was first described by

Pierre Sonnerat Pierre Sonnerat (18 August 1748 – 31 March 1814) was a French naturalist, colonial administrator, writer and explorer. He described numerous species of plants and animals on his travels and is honoured in the genus ''Sonneratia'' and in other ...

from

Pondicherry Pondicherry, officially known as Puducherry, is the Capital city, capital and most populous city of the Puducherry (union territory), Union Territory of Puducherry in India. The city is in the Puducherry district on the southeast coast of Indi ...

somewhere in 1813.

Description

It was described as being larger than the commoner ''

Suncus murinus The Asian house shrew (''Suncus murinus'') is a shrew species native to South and Southeast Asia that has been listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List since 2008 because of its large population and wide distribution. It has been introduced i ...

'' and without a musky smell. Males were shiny black with a white band or patch on the middle of the back. Females also had the white patch but were grey. Sonnerat described the shrew as being five and a half inches 49 mmfrom the head to the base of the tail and the tail being one inch and one line or 29 mm.

Taxonomy

Since no specimen of the species exists, both its taxonomic description and its generic placement remain in question. The supposed shrew species was given a scientific name by Anthony Cheke which was first published in 2012 but the description was not considered valid by some as the

holotype A holotype (Latin: ''holotypus'') is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of s ...

was not explicitly designated (in this case the illustration, as there was no specimen) and it was therefore redescribed in 2018. The species was placed tentatively in the genus ''Diplomesodon'' which is nested within ''Crocidura'' according to a molecular phylogenetic study. Cheke placed the species tentatively in the genus based on the observation that the only other shrew species with a piebald pattern was in the central Asian species '' Diplomesodon pulchellum''. Considering that no specimen matching the species has ever been found ever since, it is thought that the species has since gone extinct because it has not been seen alive since 1813.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q62776822 Hypothetical species Controversial mammal taxa Shrews