Corbet's forest shrew

The Corbet's forest shrew is a species of mammal in the family Soricidae. It is known from a single specimen found in the Mambilla Plateau in Nigeria; its range likely extends into neighboring Cameroon. The specimen was found in a forest swamp, at an elevation of.

Taxonomy

It was described in 2009 by Rainer Hutterer and Christian Montermann from specimens gathered by G. Nikolaus in 1988, which was previously identified as Sylvisorex ollula. It was named for Gordon Corbet, mammal curator of the London Natural History Museum.

Description

S. corbeti is the largest species in the genus Sylvisorex. The head and body of the holotype specimen, an adult female, is long, with a tail. It weighs. It has dark brown fur, with round ears and unusually long hind feet. Hutterer and Montermann described it as having "a unique combination of characters of a terrestrial forest shrew with those of scansorial shrews."