Tyler's mouse opossum (''Marmosa tyleriana'') is a

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

marsupial Marsupials are a diverse group of mammals belonging to the infraclass Marsupialia. They are natively found in Australasia, Wallacea, and the Americas. One of marsupials' unique features is their reproductive strategy: the young are born in a r ...

of the family Didelphidae. It lives in rainforests of the Guiana Highlands of southern

Venezuela Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...

at elevations between 1300 and 2200 m. The species has only been found on three isolated

tepui A tepui , or tepuy (), is a member of a family of table-top mountains or mesas found in northern South America, especially in Venezuela, western Guyana, and northern Brazil. The word tepui means "house of the gods" in the native tongue of the ...

s ( Auyantepui, Marahuaca and Sarisariñama). All three of these locations are in protected areas ( Canaima, Duida-Marahuaca and Jaua-Sarisariñama national parks). The Latin species name refers to the habitat in which the opossum was first found, a '' Tyleria'' forest. In turn, both the genus ''Tyleria'' and the opossum's common name refer to Sidney F. Tyler, an American historian and photographer who helped finance the 1928-29 expedition of the

American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Located in Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 21 interconn ...

to the headwaters of the

Orinoco The Orinoco () is one of the longest rivers in South America at . Its drainage basin, sometimes known as the Orinoquia, covers approximately 1 million km2, with 65% of it in Venezuela and 35% in Colombia. It is the List of rivers by discharge, f ...

, during which the opossum was discovered.

References

Opossums Marsupials of Venezuela Endemic fauna of Venezuela Mammals described in 1931 Fauna of the Tepuis Taxa named by George Henry Hamilton Tate {{marsupial-stub