''Chelemys'' is a genus of
South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the souther ...
n
rodent
Rodents (from Latin , 'to gnaw') are mammals of the Order (biology), order Rodentia (), which are characterized by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and lower jaws. About 40% of all mammal species are roden ...
s in the tribe
Abrotrichini of family
Cricetidae
The Cricetidae are a family of rodents in the large and complex superfamily Muroidea. It includes true hamsters, voles, lemmings, muskrats, and New World rats and mice. At almost 608 species, it is the second-largest family of mammals, a ...
. Three species—''
Chelemys delfini'', ''
Chelemys macronyx'', and ''
Chelemys megalonyx''—are known, all found in central and southern
Chile
Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the eas ...
and
Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, t ...
.
[Musser and Carleton, 2005, pp. 1109–1110]
References
Literature cited
* Musser, G.G. and Carleton, M.D. 2005. Superfamily Muroidea. Pp. 894–1531 in Wilson, D.E. and Reeder, D.M. (eds.)
Mammal Species of the World: a taxonomic and geographic reference. 3rd ed Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2 vols., 2142 pp.
Rodent genera
Taxa named by Oldfield Thomas
Taxonomy articles created by Polbot
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