Torre's Cave Rat - Boromys torrei

The skull of Boromys torrei from a publication in 1918 by Glover Morrill Allen (8 February 1879 - 14 February 1942). This file is in the public domain in the United States. This applies to U.S. works where the copyright has expired, often because its first publication occurred prior to January 1, 1923. This image might not be in the public domain outside of the United States; this especially applies in the countries and areas that do not apply the rule of the shorter term for US works.

E.R. Hall (1981) treated Boromys as a subgenus of Heteropsomys, but on the basis of the morpholohy of the teeth and skull Woods (1984, 1989) recommended tentative generic rank for Boromys. (Nowak and Jones 1983; Nowak 1999)

G.M. Allen (1917) writes in the first description of this species: "It is a pleasure to associate with this interesting discovery, the name of Professor de la Torre, whose investigations have so greatly enriched our knowledge of the natural history of Cuba".

The extinct West Indian spiny rat species can be described only on the basis of their skulls and teeth. The two species from the genus Boromys have a swelling on the bone over the end of the root of the upper incisors, a channel for the passage of a nerve on the floor of the antorbital foramen, and two inner en two outer reentrant fold on each of the cheek teeth. The incisors are coloured orange yellow. (Allen 1918; Allen 1942; Hall 1981) The two species of Boromys differ chiefly in size, with Boromys torrei being smaller than Boromys offella (Allen 1917; Allen 1918; Allen 1942). No doubt there were some further differences in structure and habit that do not appear from the fragments at hand (Allen 1942).

This species occurred in Cuba and the Isla de la Juventud or 'Isle of Youth' (Allen 1918; Allen 1942; Turvey and Helgen 2008). Isla de la Juvetud was until 1978 known as Isla de Pinos or Isle of Pines (Wikipedia contributors 2011). Northing is known about its specific habitat.

Image: map showing the location of the islands of Cuba and Isle of Pines (in red), the former range of the Torre's Cave Rat or the Lesser Cuban Spiny Rat. Created by Peter Maas for The Sixth Extinction website. This image has been released under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives 3.0 Licence. This applies worldwide.

The Torre's Cave Rat was first discovered in a breccia solidly cemented by infiltrated lime deposits in a cave in the Sierra de Hato Nuevo, Matanzas Province, Cuba (Allen 1917; Allen 1942) and described by G.M. Allen in 1917. Remains have been found throughout Cuba and Isla de la Juventud. The smaller Torre's Cave Rat seems to have been the dominant form found in caves, as only about five percent represents the larger Oriente Cave Rat (Boromys offella) (Allen 1942). The reason that its remains seem more numerous in the caves, is perhaps because the smaller animals were more easily taken by the now extinct giant barn owls (Allen 1942). The larger Oriente Cave Rat was first discovered in excavations of an old native village site, indicating that it was probably used as a food animal by the natives (Allen 1942; Nowak 1999). That the smaller Torre's Cave Rat was ignored as a food animal by the natives may be indicated by the absence of its remains in kitchen middens (Allen 1942).

Image: drawings of molars and jaw bones of the Torre's Cave Rat from the plate belonging to the first description of this species as published by Glover Morrill Allen (8 February 1879 - 14 February 1942) in 1917. This file is in the public domain in the United States. This applies to U.S. works where the copyright has expired, often because its first publication occurred prior to January 1, 1923. This image might not be in the public domain outside of the United States; this especially applies in the countries and areas that do not apply the rule of the shorter term for US works.

Barn owl pellets in fossiliferous cave deposits in the western part of Cuba, containing predated Torre's Cave Rats, other mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians, were dated by radiocarbon dating at ¹⁴C 7864 ± 96 years BP and calibrated at 8993 - 8453 BP or 7044 - 6504 BCE (Jiménez Vázquez et al. 2005; Turvey 2009). However, this species is known from recent fossil deposits which also contain invasive rats. This suggest that it persisted until the modern era and that the extinction followed the arrival of European settlers around 1500 CE (Allen 1942; Turvey and Helgen 2008; Turvey 2009). Based on the remarkably fresh bones, some suggest it might have survived until the latter half of the nineteenth century (Allen 1942; Goodwin and Goodwin 1973; Nowak 1999).

Unknown, but the extinction likely followed the introduction of rats (Turvey and Helgen 2008).

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The genus Boromys is an extinct genus of Cuban rodents in the Echimyidae family or the Spiny Rats. It closest relative is the Oriente Cave Rat or Larger Cuban Spiny Rat (Boromys offella), which became extinct around the same time. The other West Indian Spiny Rats belonging to the subfamily are the Haitian Edible Rat (Brotomys contractus), the Hispaniolan Edible Rat (Brotomys voratus), and the genera Heteropsomys and Puestoricomys and are all extinct. The family Echimyidae has still several living members such as the Armored Rat (Hoplomys gymnurus), the Atlantic Bamboo Rat (Kannabateomys amblyonyx), the Amazon Bamboo Rat (Dactylomys dactylinus), the White-faced Spiny Tree-rat (Echimys chrysurus) and more.

Photo: A stuffed Armored Rat (Hoplomys gymnurus) taken at the National Museum of Natural History (Washington, D.C., United States). Photographed by 'ZeWrestler' on 8 November 2009. A full resolution version can be found on Wikimedia Commons. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Torre's Cave Rat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Allen, G.M. (1917). Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy at Harvard College, in Cambridge. 61(1): 6. Available online: Internet Archive.

Allen, G.M. (1918). Fossil mammals from Cuba. In: Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy at Harvard College, in Cambridge. 62(4):138-140. Available online: Internet Archive.

Allen, G.M. (1942). Extinct and vanishing mammals of the western hemisphere with the marine species of all the oceans. Special Publication No. 11. American Committee for International Wild Life Protection. The Intelligencer Printing Co. Lancaster, Pa. Available online: Internet Archive.

Anthony, H.E. (1919). Mammals collected in eastern Cuba in 1917, with descriptions of two new species. Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. 41, pp.
625-643, 3 pis.

Hall, E.R. (1981). The mammals of North America. John Wiley & Sons, New York, 2 vols.

Jiménez Vázquez, O., Condis, M.M., and Elvis Garcí,a C. (2005). Vertebrados post-glaciales en un residuario fósil de Tyto alba scopoli (Aves: Tytonidae) en el occidente de Cuba. Revista Mexicana de Mastozoología 9, 85–112.

Nowak, R. M. [ed.] (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World, Sixth Edition, Volume II. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London. ISBN 0-8018-5789-9.

Nowak, R. M. and J.L. Paradiso [eds.] (1983). Walker's Mammals of the World, Fourth Edition, Volume II. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London. ISBN 0-8018-2525-3.

Turvey, S.T. (2009). Holocene mammal extinctions. In: Turvey, S.T.  (editor) (2009). Holocene extinctions. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.

Turvey, S. & Helgen, K. (2008). Boromys torrei. In: IUCN (2011). IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2011.1. <www.iucnredlist.org>. Downloaded on 24 June 2011.

Wikipedia contributors (2011). 'Isla de la Juventud', Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 19 June 2011, 12:18 UTC, <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Isla_de_la_Juventud&oldid=435081093> [accessed 26 June 2011] .

Woods, C.A. (1984). Hystricognath rodents. In: Anderson, S. and J.K. Jones, Jr. [eds.] (1984). Orders and families of Recent mammals of the world. John Wiley & Sons, New York, pp. 389-446.

Woods, C.A. (1989). Endemic rodents of the West Indies: the end of a splendid isolation. In: Lidicker, W.Z. Jr. [ed.] (1989). Rodents: a world survey of species of conservation concern. Occas. Pap. Internatl. Union Conserv. Nat. Species Survival Comm. No 4: 11-19.