Gardner, A. L. (ed.). 2007 [2008]. Mammals of South America. Volume 1: Marsupials, Xenarthrans, Shrews, and Bats. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, and London, United Kingdom, 669 pp. ISBN-13: 978-0-226-28240-4, price (hardbound), $75.

Abstract

A. L. Gardner (ed.). 2007 [2008]. Mammals of South America. Volume 1: Marsupials, Xenarthrans, Shrews, and Bats. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, and London, United Kingdom, 669 pp. ISBN-13: 978-0-226-28240-4, price (hardbound), $75. The 1st meeting of the American Society of Mammalogists that I attended was at East Lansing, Michigan, in 1977, when my advisor, Phil Myers, had the unenviable chore of introducing a tongue-tied youngster to senior colleagues from other institutions. Thus it was, on the 2nd or 3rd day of the meetings, that I met Al Gardner, Jim Patton, and Syd Anderson huddled together like conspirators over lunch in the Michigan State University cafeteria. Mute with admiration, I listened to their just-hatched plan to edit a 3-volume taxonomic treatise on the mammals of South America. Thirty years later, volume 1 is finally published. It was worth the long wait. The mammalian fauna of South America is one of the most diverse of any continent, and its taxonomic literature has deep historical roots in the European exploration of the New World (Hershkovitz 1987). The 1st formal descriptions of South American mammals published by 18th century taxono-mists (e.g., Linnaeus 1758) were based on the reports of even earlier explorer-naturalists like Georg Markgraf (1610–1644—Whitehead 1979) or on natural history specimens amassed by amateur collectors like Albert Seba (1665–1736—Engel 1937). Unfortunately, early South American mammal names were often poorly diagnosed and lacked definite type localities and type specimens. Inevitably, subsequent mammalogists disagreed about the application of such problematic names, some of which remain destabilizing sources of nomenclatural confusion to the present day. Taxonomic practice improved steadily throughout the 19th century, with the result that most species of South American mammals described from about 1830 onward were based on actual specimens from known localities. However, the taxonomic literature of the 1800s is mostly contained in rare books and obscure journals that are now available only to researchers at …