NO. 3 THE RELATIONSHIPS OF QUEMISIA GRAVIS — RAY II 



tions of Wood and Patterson (1959, pp. 301, 324-326), the invader 

 would necessarily have been an echimyid (or protocapromyid) and 

 the time pre-Colhuehuapian. 6 Persistence of P 4 in some insular 

 descendants perhaps would not be so startling as in mainland forms. 



The above suggestions will remain highly speculative until cranial 

 material of Quemisia and of Tertiary caviomorphs is discovered in 

 the Antilles. Nevertheless, it is clear already that Quemisia is po- 

 tentially of great importance in the interpretation of the history of 

 Antillean caviomorphs and has bearing on the arrangement of the 

 Caviomorpha as a whole. Further, it is increasingly clear that the 

 large, high, complex island of Hispaniola will eventually yield the 

 answers to many problems of Antillean faunal history. 



I acknowledge with pleasure the assistance of David H. Johnson 

 of the U. S. National Museum, who made available the extensive 

 collections of fossil caviomorphs, including Quemisia, from the vicin- 

 ity of St. Michel de L'Atalaye; Ernest Williams, Karl Koopman, 

 and Bryan Patterson, who read (but did not necessarily fully approve) 

 drafts of the manuscript; Barbara Lawrence, who granted access 

 to the large collection of capromyids in the Museum of Compara- 

 tive Zoology; James Gavan of the University of Florida Health 

 Center, who provided the X-rays on which figure 1 is based; Sue 

 Hirschfeld who prepared figure 1 and plate 1 ; the National Science 

 Foundation, which financed these illustrations through NSF GB 

 178; and Lawrence B. Isham who prepared figure 2. Much of this 

 work was done while the author held the position of assistant curator 

 in the Florida State Museum, University of Florida. 



REFERENCES 



Allen, Glover M. 



1942. Extinct and vanishing mammals of the Western Hemisphere, with the 

 marine species of all the oceans. Amer. Committee for Internat. 

 Wild Life Protection, Spec. Publ. No. 11, xv -f 620 pp. 

 Anthony, Harold E. 



1920. New mammals from Jamaica. Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. 42, 

 art. 12, pp. 469-475, figs. 1-4, pi. 33. 

 Fischer, Johann B. 



1830. Addenda, emendanda et index ad synopsis mammalium, pp. 329-456 

 [=529-656]. Stuttgart. 



* This age seems inordinately early on the basis of the evidence presented by 

 Wood and Patterson (p. 301). If P* was nonfunctional in echimyids after 

 Deseadan time, it seems developmentally improbable that a cryptic P 4 crown (a 

 structure elaborated late in ontogeny) would continue to be produced in a 

 Santacruzian form. 



