 Reference Base  Mammals of Borneo, field keys and an annotated checklist |
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Medway, Lord, 1977. Mammals of Borneo, field keys and an annotated checklist. Kuala Lumpur, MBRAS (Monograph no. 7), pp. i-xii, 1-172
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| Location: |
Asia - South East Asia - Borneo |
| Subject: |
Distribution - Records |
| Species: |
Sumatran Rhino |
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In the first report of rhinoceroses from Borneo in scientific literature, M?ller (1839-40) could offer as authentication only a secondhand description of a one-horned animal, suggesting the occurrence of the Javan Rhinoceros, Rhinoceros sondaicus Desmarest. A skull of this species was among a small collection purchased by the British Museum in 1859 from a dealer (apparently named Wright) who said that the specimens came from Borneo. Since the other mammals represented in this collection included some species now known not to occur in Borneo (namely the pigs Babirussa and Sus verrucosus) the provenance of all must be doubted. Nonetheless, this skull (reg. no. 59.8.16.1) was later described as Rhinoceros nasalis (Gray, 1867, Proc. zool. Soc. Lond.: 1012), with the repeated attribution to 'Borneo' (see Gray, 1869: 307; no. 723c). R. nasalis is now recognised as a synonym of R. sondaicus sondaicus of Java, and there have been no satisfactorily authenticated records of living members of this species from Borneo in historic times (van Strien, 1974; Rookmaaker, 1976).
Among fossil material, two teeth sent from Sarawak by Rajah James Brooke and attributed by Busk (1869) to very young R. sondaicus have been reidentified as D. sumatrensis by Hooijer (1946), and two molars recovered from gold workings in an alluvial cave deposit in the upper Sarawak river provisionally referred to R. sondaicus by Lydekker (1886: 129) have also been shown to be D. sumatrensis (Medway, 1966). Fossil remains of rhinoceros have been found in the archaeological deposits at Niah caves at depths corresponding to dates from the late Upper Pleistocene to historic times; these are all compatible with D. sumatrensis (Medway, 1966).
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