102 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



Of the lesser Cuban spiny rat, remains seem more numerous 

 in the caves, perhaps because the animals were more easily 

 taken by the owls. The species was first found in a breccia 

 solidly cemented by infiltrated lime deposits in a cave in the 

 Sierra de Hato Nuevo, Matanzas Province. Anthony found 

 it abundantly represented in the cave deposits at Daiquiri, 

 while on the Isle of Pines additional remains were unearthed 

 in caves in the Sierra de Casas by Messrs. Barbour, Brooks, 

 and Warner and at another cave deposit in the same island by 

 the Messrs. Link (Peterson, 1917). Nothing further is known 

 of either species, which must both have become extinct within 

 the past century from causes not altogether clear. Neither 

 Gundlach nor Poey seems to have known of the animals, yet 

 some of the bones recovered, such as the nearly perfect skull 

 figured in my paper of 1918, are so fresh that they can be of no 

 very great age. Anthony (1919) writes concerning the bones 

 he collected in the Cueva de los Indios, at Daiquiri: "Some 

 idea of the abundance of the members of this genus is shown 

 by the fact that I have cleaned and examined over five hundred 

 mandibular rami, while nearly as many fragments have been 

 ignored as too badly broken up. The small torrei seems to have 

 been the dominant form, as only about five percent of this 

 series represents the larger" one. That the smaller species was 

 ignored as a food animal by the natives may be indicated by 

 the absence of its remains in kitchen middens. 



Although in the general structure of the teeth the genus is 

 strongly reminiscent of the continental spiny rats of South 

 America, it has relatively "broader nasals. Miller points out a 

 close resemblance of the enamel pattern to that of the extinct 

 Stichomys of the Santa Cruz formation of the South American 

 Miocene. The fact that the related Brotomys of Hispaniola is 

 nevertheless unknown elsewhere, and the lack of similar forms 

 on the mainland, point to long isolation. Miller regards the 

 two genera as relatives of the Puerto Rican Heteropsomys, 

 which, if this surmise proves to be substantiated, would imply 

 some common origin of the three types now regarded as 

 generically distinct. Anthony, however, believes that Hetero- 

 psomys is a near ally of the agoutis. 



True (1885) records a large spiny rat taken on Martinique 

 by Ober in 1878. It was sent to the United States National 

 Museum and there identified as "Loncheres" (= Echimys) 



