Diplothrix legata
The Ryukyu long-tailed giant rat or Ryukyu rat, also known as the rodent in the family Muridae. It is the only extant species in the genus Diplothrix and is endemic to the central Ryukyu Islands of Japan. Its natural habitat consists of temperate forests.

Photaro · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Diplothrix legata on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
2 occurrences- Pleistocene100%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
1 formation
- Itokina Formation · Ryukyu Group1
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The named rock units Diplothrix legata has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Diplothrix legata and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Diplothrix legata and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
7 taxa- Cervus1 site
- Emydinae1 site
- Geoemyda amamiensis1 site
- Manouria oyamai1 site
- Pentalagus1 site
- Tokudaia muennicki1 site
- Tokudaia osimensis1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Diplothrix legata, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
2 references- Why are there no giants at the dwarves feet? Insular micromammals in the eastern Mediterranean1
- Fossil deer from the Tokuno island, Ryukyu Islands, Southwest Japan1
Each of the 2 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Diplothrix legata
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Photaro
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Diplothrix legata was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0.