Range Description

Endemic to the Mediterranean region. The mouse-tailed dormouse is found in Bulgaria and Turkey (both European and Asian Turkey). It may also occur in eastern Greece. It is mainly a lowland species.

This species is found in southeast Bulgaria through Thrace (Kurtonur and Ozkan, 1990) and western Turkey (Storch, 1978). The exact limits are unknown in western Anatolia, where the species is presently known from only three separate localities. The species was first described as a fossil species in 1937, and was only described as an extant species in the late 1940s. Subfossil information from southern Turkey and Israel indicated a larger range over the last few thousand years. The last published records in Bulgaria are from 1985.