Three species of large extinct rice rat, genus Megalomys, are known from the islands of the Lesser Antilles. M. luciae and M. desmerestii survived on St. Lucia and Martinique until the late 19th and 20th centuries respectively. The third taxon, M. audreyae, has hitherto been known only from the holotype collected from a cave breccia on Barbuda and considered ‘late Pleistocene’. Additionally, a large undescribed rice rat is ubiquitous in archaeological middens on Barbuda, Antigua and islands to the south.

      We have examined the newly prepared holotype of M. audreyae and demonstrated that the undescribed archaeological taxon from Barbuda and Antigua is synonomous with the Barbuda holotype of M. audreyae. We conclude that the original distribution of the genus was not disjunct as previously argued, but probably covered a continuous swathe of islands from St. Lucia in the south to Barbuda in the north.

        The extinction of M. audreyae on Barbuda occurred no earlier than 750 +/- 50 rcybp (675 cal BP). The two-sigma error envelope on this specimen (735 - 645 cal BP) lies with two centuries of the European discovery of the island and within three centuries of its first colonization by Europeans in 1628. We conclude that the actual extinction of the taxon on Barbuda almost certainly postdated first contact with Europeans and their commensals.