For Immediate Release The Field Museum, Greg Borzo (312) 665-7106 gborzo@fieldmuseum.org New Mouse Species Found in the Philippines CHICAGO—A team of American and Filipino biologists has discovered a new species –or perhaps a new genus – of mouse in the Philippines that took them quite by surprise. The tiny mouse was captured on Mount Banahaw, a national park in the south-central portion of Luzon Island, only about 50 miles from Manila. The bright-orange animal has a large head, heavily muscled jaws and powerful teeth that can open hard nuts. It weighs about 15 grams. Its body is three inches long and its tail is four inches long. The mammal’s whiskers extend about eight times as wide as its head, and a second set of “whiskers” arises from a patch at the back edge of each eye. Both these features are extremely unusual. “Nearly all of the many unique, small mammals on Luzon Island are descended from just two species that reached the Philippines from the Asian mainland about 10-15 million years ago,” said Lawrence Heaney, curator of mammals at The Field Museum in Chicago and co-leader of the team. Heaney has been studying biological diversity in the Philippines for over 20 years, and describes the Philippines as having biological diversity equal to “the Galapagos Islands times 10, with one of the highest concentrations of unique mammals of any place in the world.” Joint team of scientists The new species was found by a team from The Field Museum, Philippine National Museum, Utah Museum of Natural History, and Laksambuhay Conservation in the Philippines. The team was scouting the mountain, considered a holy site by some Filipino sects, for unusual, small mammal species. Eric Rickart, a member of the team and curator of vertebrates in the Utah Museum of Natural History, said the mouse was “not related to any of the other rodents” found in the northern Philippines. Continue>>