South Australian Spiny-Haired Rat
Extinct circa 1850 CE • Kangaroo Island
"The South Australian Spiny-Haired Rat was an old world rodent which seems to have become extinct in the mid-nineteenth century. It was possibly the victim of introduced European rats and foxes, but a more probable cause for its extinction was habitat destruction. [It] was first collected in 1841 on Kangaroo Island and was never reported after 1850. There are only seven known specimens of it in the world."
David Day, The Encyclopedia of Vanished Species (Hong Kong: Mclaren Pub., 1989), 235.
Image: Chapman and Hall, Australia and New Zealand, Continental Series, Digital image, 1848, Web.
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