A NEW mammal species — thought to be the first discovered in Europe for more than a century — has been identified by a scientist based at the University of Durham.

The grey mouse, found in Cyprus by Thomas Cucchi, has been confirmed as an entirely new species by genetic tests, overturning the widespread assumption that Europe had no mammals left to be discovered.

Dr Cucchi, who is French, was working on the Mediterranean island studying mouse teeth from the Stone Age period and comparing them with those of four modern mouse species when he came across a variety that seemed to differ from all known European mice.

The species, named Mus cypriacus, or the Cypriot mouse, has a larger head, ears, eyes and teeth than previously known examples. It is described in the journal Zootaxa.

The find is remarkable because new mammal species are seldom reported anywhere in the world, and most recent discoveries have emerged from regions such as New Guinea that are not densely populated and have been little studied by scientists.

The biodiversity of Europe has been combed through so extensively since Victorian times that few expected creatures as large as mice to be found.

“New mammal species are mainly discovered in hotspots of biodiversity like South East Asia and it was generally believed that every species of mammal in Europe had been identified,” Dr Cucchi said. “This is why the discovery of a new species of mouse on Cyprus was so unexpected and exciting.”

Dr Cucchi’s work has shown that the Cypriot mouse appears to predate the arrival of human beings on the island, an unusual occurrence because most other mammals endemic to Mediterranean islands died out when challenged by the presence of Man and the animals he brought with him.

“To understand the origin of this new mouse I compared its teeth morphology with the ones of fossil mice collected by palaeontologists,” he said. “This comparison revealed that this mouse colonised and adapted to the Cypriot environment several thousand years before the arrival of Man.

“The discovery of this new species and the riddle behind its survival offers a new area of study for scientists studying the evolutionary process of mammals and the ecological consequences of human activities on island biodiversity.”

The mouse is the latest of about a dozen species of mammals discovered by scientists over the past few years.

Last month, researchers from Conservation International found a new species of tree rat in the Amapa region of the Brazilian rainforest, along with other new amphibians, lizards and fish.

In May, scientists confirmed that a monkey named the kipunji, found in Tanzania last year, is the first new primate to be discovered for 83 years. It even belongs to a new genus — a level of classification one higher than the species.

A new mouse was discovered recently on the island of Camiguin, in the Philippines, and last year scientists photographed a strange creature in Borneo thought to be a new species of carnivore. Most surprisingly, a bizarre rodent that was first spotted in a bushmeat market in Laos has turned out to be a member of a family of mammals that was thought to have become extinct more than 11 million years ago.

The kha-nyou, or Laonastes aenigmamus, is more like an extinct family of Asian mammals called the Diatomyidae than any modern rodent.

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