CYPRUS is the home of a previously unknown species of mouse, thought to be the first new species of mammal discovered in Europe for over 100 years, an academic paper has revealed.
The findings appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Zootaxa, an international journal for animal taxonomists.
The biodiversity of Europe has been combed through so extensively since Victorian times that new mammal species are rarely found there, and few scientists had expected new creatures as large as mice to be discovered on the continent.
Cypriot scientist, Dr Eleftherios Hadjisterkotis, actually first discovered the mouse, named the Cyprus mouse or Mus cypriacus, nearly 18 years ago, but his discovery has remained hidden until now.
“When studying the pellets from barn owls in 1988, I noticed that the mandible of some of the mice had some unusual features,” he said.
However, an opportunity to confirm his initial suspicions didn’t arise until 2003, when Dr Thomas Cucchi and the Museum of Natural History, Paris, were conducting some archaeological excavations near Limassol.
It was the analysis of the DNA of the mouse that finally confirmed that Dr Hadjisterkotis had indeed found a new species. “However, you can’t tell the specific phenotypic characteristics from DNA information alone,” he said.
“So a team of five scientists from the Museum of Natural History, Paris, and the University of Montpellier with the co-operation from the Ministry of the Interior, began trapping mice from 15 sites around the island.” Dr Hadjisterkotis added. It was the publication of the findings from this study earlier this year that sparked the sudden interest in this incredible discovery.
The mouse is recognisably different from the ‘house mouse’, featuring larger eyes, ears and head, and can be found throughout the island, but less so near the coast.
In an interview with The Times Dr Cucchi said, “to understand the origin of this new mouse I compared its teeth morphology with the ones of fossil mice collected by palaeontologists. This comparison revealed that this mouse colonised and adapted to the Cypriot environment several thousand years before the arrival of man.”
The discovery indicated that the mouse survived man’s arrival on the island and now lived alongside common European house mice, whose ancestors had arrived with man during the Neolithic period, the university said.
“All other endemic mammals of Mediterranean islands died out following the arrival of man, with the exception of
two species of shrew. The new mouse of Cyprus is the only endemic rodent still alive, and as such can be considered as a living fossil,” Cucchi later told the Associated Press.
Dr Hadjisterkotis plans to continue his work on the mouse, albeit in his own time. “It’s taken 18 years to get this far, so we’re making slow, but efficient progress.”
