Résumé
Nowadays, rice rats (Oryzomyini tribe) have a large taxonomic diversity on theAmerican continent. Yet, they used to be present in the Lesser Antilles before theirdisappearance following the European colonisation. These extinct insularrepresentatives have been the subject of numerous studies including genetic andmorphometric, and anatomical descriptions aiming to understand their past diversity.Three genera specific to this area are now known that could be associated with ageographically structured phenotypic diversity. In our study, the combined analysis ofmorphometric signals (sizes and shapes) from the teeth and mandibles of 215specimens from 33 archaeological sites on 11 islands, highlights the presence of aneven larger diversity composed by 6 morphotypes and 11 sub-morphotypes. Thesegroups, which subdivide the three previous clusters, help to clarify thearchaeobiogeography of oryzomyine in the Lesser Antilles. These morphotypicdifferences, which respect a geographical organisation, favour the hypothesis ofdifferentiation induced by population isolation within islands. However, thecoexistence of several sub-morphotypes on some of the islands may revealecological differenciation. All together our data revealed a greater diversity thanknown before for an extinct group of rice rats in the Lesser Antilles archipelago onlyallowed by a bioarchaeological study combining multiple lines of evidence.