Internet translation from French into English of "Pascal et al., 2003 - Évolution holocène de la faune de Vertébrés de France : invasions et disparitions. Le Lapin rat : Prolagus sardus (Wagner, 1829)" (online at
www.rennes.inra.fr/scribe/document/annexee.pdf.):
The Rabbit rat: Prolagus sardus (Wagner, 1829) Prolagus sardus, called Rabbit rat in French (Vine and Al, 1991), is an extinct Lagomorph of the family of Ochotonidae, family currently represented by the only Ochotona kind of Central Asia, China and North America (Wilson & Reeder, 1993). The species lived in Corsica and Sardinia, like in the peripheral small islands of these two islands, at Pleistocene higher and the Holocene one. It results from a known line of Western Europe as of Oligo-Miocène (Lopez-Martinez & Thaler, 1975) and present on the insular solid mass corso-Sardinian at higher Pliocène. For the complex evolutionary diagrams implying a double colonization, extinctions-recolonisations and hybridizations, who had been proposed to explain the diversity of the fossil forms pleistocenes corsosardes (Lopez-Martinez & Thaler, 1975), was recently substituted a process of insular evolution traditional implying essentially an increase in size (Turmès, 2002). In this new scenario, it is at old average Pleistocene that the Rabbit rat would have emerged gradually, starting from P. barber, his direct ancestor. The Rabbit rat knew an evolution sensitive during average Pleistocene. This evolution slowed down considerably at recent average Pleistocene and higher Pleistocene (Pereira, 2001; Turmès, 2002). If the geographical existence of forms during Tardiglaciaire and the Holocene one is probably founded (Tobien, 1935; Vine, 1988), the analysis of their characteristics does not allow to ségréguer the Sardinian populations and Corsican in two species. The Rabbit rats remainders are accumulated per million in the caves and shelters of Tardiglaciaire and Holocene old of Corsica and Sardinia (Vine and Al, 2002). The species then constituted the principal prey of the night raptors, in particular of dwarf Grandduc corso-Sardinian (Bubo insularis) of the Barn owl (Tyto alba) and several diurnal Raptors (Vine, 1988). The Rabbit rat was also the principal game of the first Mesolithic occupants of the island (Vine & Desse-Berset, 1995). Thus the number of individuals consumed by the occupants of the Mesolithic site of Assembles Leone, close to Bonifacio, during the last third of the 8th millenium before J.-C., at the time of four or five phases of occupation, was considered ranging between 50 000 and 150 000, which represents a mass ranging between 25 and 75 tons (Vine and Al, 1998). This consumption continued throughout Neolithic era and at the Ages of Metals (Vine, 1988). The results of the diachronic analysis of the fluctuations of relative abundances of the endemic species mammaliennes and immigrants of Corsica, during historical times, suggest that the Rabbit rat was an animal rather anthropophobe which preferentially attended the open mediums and the low maquis (Vine & Valladas, 1996). It is however probable that it occupied a broad ecological niche, as it is the case for much of tax insular. Holocene fossil remainders were found only up to 800 m of altitude (Vine, 1988) but it is possible that the species also occupied the lawns of altitudes, the fossiliferous sites of altitude being lacking. In addition, of the isotopic analyses showed that its diet was strictly vegetarian (Pouydebat, 1997).
Being based on a text of Cetti (1777) which described "enormous rats" (smisurati topi) which were unknown for him, several authors advance that a population relic of Rabbits rats survived on the Sardinian small island of Tavolara until the end of the 18th century (Vine, 1988). Barbara Wilkens (new) however recently argued that they were probably Rats surmulots (Rattus norvegicus). It is on the other hand very probable that the small Corsican rabbits mentioned at the 3rd century before J.-C. by Polybe (XI, 3; Roussel, éd. 1970) were Rabbits rats, and it is also possible that the Latin toponym of the islands Lavezzi, known as "Cuniculaires" by Pline the Old one (Hist. Nat., 3, 13; Ernout éd., 1952-62), mean that the advisors of the ancient author saw there Rabbits rats (Vine, 1994: page 237). The fossil remainders most recent of the species date besides from the first centuries of our era (Vine & Valladas, 1996). The only known Corsican site of late Antiquity did not deliver any Rabbit rat remainder (Vine & Marinval-Vine, 1989) and it is probable that, if this species appraisal by the Man had persisted beyond the first millenium of our era, of the vestiges would have been found by it in the many archeological sites of the central Middle Ages and of the Low Middle Ages d`où it misses completely (Vine, 1988 & 1999; Cucchi, 2000). In Sardinia, no archaeological remainder of Rabbits rats posterior at the beginning of the Age of Iron was still updated (Delussu, 2000). The causes of the extinction of the rabbit rat are probably multiple (Vine, 1988). The installation in Corsica and Sardinia with the Mesolithic era, between 7500 and 6900 years before J.-C., of human groups nourishing mainly Rabbits rats, undoubtedly considerably accentuated the pressure of predation whose species was the object. Even if the taking away by the Man could be reduced to the Neolithic era, the pressure of predation exerted on the species at that time were probably not slackened because of the introduction of the Dog (Canis lupus) and of the russet-red Fox (Vulpes vulpes) from the very start of the Neolithic era around 5500 years before J.-C. These phenomena generated a sensitive reduction in manpower of the populations if one believes of it the strong decline of the frequency of the archaeological remainders of the species, in particular as from the 4th millenium before J.-C. the introduction of a competition with other introduced Mammals, in particular the black Rat (Rattus rattus) as from the 4th century its situation. As for the endemic Shrew of Corsica, endemic Mulot corso-Sardinian and endemic Campagnol corso-Sardinian, it seems that the death-blow was carried to him by the extension of the agro-pastoral influence of the first millenium of our era (Vine & Valladas, 1996) and, in this particular case, it would act of the episode occurred for the Roman Period.
Jean-Denis Vigne
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