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Science 10 March 2006:
Vol. 311. no. 5766, pp. 1456 - 1458
DOI: 10.1126/science.1124187
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Reports

Laonastes and the "Lazarus Effect" in Recent Mammals

Mary R. Dawson,1* Laurent Marivaux,2 Chuan-kui Li,3 K. Christopher Beard,1 Grégoire Métais1

The living Laotian rodent Laonastes aenigmamus, first described in early 2005, has been interpreted as the sole member of the new family Laonastidae on the basis of its distinctive morphology and apparent phylogenetic isolation from other living rodents. Here we show that Laonastes is actually a surviving member of the otherwise extinct rodent family Diatomyidae, known from early Oligocene to late Miocene sites in Pakistan, India, Thailand, China, and Japan. Laonastes is a particularly striking example of the "Lazarus effect" in Recent mammals, whereby a taxon that was formerly thought to be extinct is rediscovered in the extant biota, in this case after a temporal gap of roughly 11 million years.

1 Section of Vertebrate Paleontology, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, 4400 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.
2 Laboratoire de Paléontologie, Institut des Sciences de l'Évolution, Case Courrier 064, Université Montpellier II, place Eugène Bataillon, F-34095 Montpellier Cedex 05, France.
3 Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Post Office Box 643, Beijing 100044, People's Republic of China.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: dawsonm{at}carnegiemnh.org

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