Further record of Golunda ellioti Gray, 1837 from South East of Iran with notes on its postcranial skeleton

Genus Golunda Gray, 1837 is a monotypic taxon, which is known in family Muridae by its grooved upper incisors and special columnar structure of upper molarshigh high separated cusps. It is believed that this genus is one of the most primitive species in this family. The Indian Bush Rat, Golunda ellioti Gray, 1837 is a rat-like rodent and is very similar to Rattus rattus but its size is considerably smaller and the tail is slightly shorter than the head and body length. Also, the tail is covered with short hairs. The head of Golunda is vole- like in its appearance. Eyes are relatively bigger than Rattus species and ears is more flattened, circular and covered with hairs. Bush Rat hasstout and well- developed feet with four digits on the forefeet and a very short vestigial thumb, bearing a claw. The soles of the hind feet are always blackish unlike other murids. With their naked soles they are adapted for climbing trees and low bushes. Incisors are reddish and deeply grooved. Cheek teeth are strongly cuspidate with three rows of columnar cusps. Due to their peculiar molars, they are well adapted to feeding on hard seeds (Roberts, 1977). Type locality of this species is India, Dharwar and it is distributed in the SE of Iran (Misonne, 1990), Pakistan (Roberts, 1977), Nepal (Ellerman, 1966), N and NE India south through Indian peninsula to Sri Lanka (Agrawal, 2000).Nazari and Farid (1991) were recorded this species in Iran from 40 Km of southeast of Jiroft in Kerman Province (28° 37΄N and 57° 46΄E, 1410 m asl). In this study, we captured two adult as well as on immature specimens from Jiroft (28° 33΄ 17.33 ״ N and 57° 43΄ 46.63 ״ E, 615 m asl) in a Palm and Citrus orchards (Fig. 1). Detailed morphometric dataand the morphological characteristics of the specimens were presented in table 1 and figure 2, respectively.