Order Rodentia - Family Spalacidae Author Wilson, Don E. Author Reeder, DeeAnn text 2005 The Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore Mammal Species of the World: a Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3 rd Edition), Volume 2 907 926 book chapter 0-8018-8221-4 10.5281/zenodo.7316535 Spalax giganteus Nehring 1898 Spalax giganteus Nehring 1898 , Sitzb. Ges. Naturf. Fr. Berlin: 169 . Type Locality: Russia , Daghestan , W shore of Caspian Sea, near Makhachkala (see Topachevskii, 1969 ). Vernacular Names: Giant Blind Mole Rat . Distribution: Steppes north of the Caucuses and west of the Caspian Sea ( Puzachenko, 1993 ). Distribution summarized by other researchers includes the Kazakhstan S. uralensis ( Gromov and Erbajeva, 1995 ; Topachevskii, 1969 ; Vorontsov et al., 1977 b ). Conservation: IUCN – Vulnerable. Discussion: Once included in S. microphthalmus ( Ellerman and Morrison-Scott, 1951 ) , but revised by Topachevskii (1969) as a separate species and listed as such by Pavlinov and Rossolimo (1987 , 1998) and Pavlinov et al. (1995 a ) . Geographic range is parapatric with that of S. microphthalmus ( Corbet, 1978 c ) . The taxon uralensis has usually been included in S. giganteus (e. g., Gromov and Erbajeva, 1995 ; Topachevskii, 1969 ; Vorontsov et al., 1977 b ), but analyses of cranial dimensions and proportions indicated significant differences between populations from west of the Caspian Sea ( giganteus ) and the isolated segment in Kazakhstan ( uralensis ) and prompted the recognition of uralensis as a species ( Puzachenko, 1993 ), an arrangement anticipated by Topachevskii (1969) and accepted by Pavlinov et al. (1995 a ) and Pavlinov and Rossolimo (1998) . Chromosomal traits (2n = 64, FN = 124) documented by Lyapunova et al. (1974) . Reviewed by Gromov and Erbajeva (1995 , Russian segment).