Abstract

A series of 12 shrews was collected in May 1894 by Edward W. Nelson and Edward A. Goldman on Volcan San Martin Tuxtla, Veracruz, Mexico, at 4,800 feet. A year later, C. Hart Merriam described these specimens as a new species, Blarina nelsoni (Merriam 1895). The holotype (skin and skull, USNM 65437), a subadult female, was deposited along with the entire series at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Merriam (1895) reported that this shrew was known only from the isolated volcano of Tuxtla, and that was common in the forest on the mountain ranging up to the extreme summit at 5,400 feet. This species was later transferred to the genus Cryptotis as C. nelsoni by Miller (1912); Choate (1970) treated it as a distinctive subspecies of C. mexicana-C. mexicana nelsoni and named the type locality as ‘‘Volcan San Martin’’. Recently, Woodman and Timm (1999) recognized Nelson’s small-eared shrew as a distinctive species, C. nelsoni, after examination of the 12 known museum specimens, and Carraway (2007) concurred with this taxonomic status. Choate (1970) after extensive review of all specimens of Middle American Cryptotis in the world’s collections stated that no specimens of C. m. nelsoni had been obtained since the original series

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