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Abstract

The Eurasian badgers (Melesspp.) are widespread in the Palaearctic Region, occurring from the British Islands in the west to the Japanese Islands in the east, including the Scandinavia, Southwest Asia and southern China. The morphometric vari-ation in 30 cranial characters of 692 skulls ofMelesfrom across the Palaearctic was here analyzed. This craniometric anal-ysis revealed a significant difference between the European and Asian badger phylogenetic lineages, which can be further split in two pairs of taxa:meles–canescensandleucurus–anakuma. Overall, European badger populations are very sim-ilar morphologically, particularly with regards to the skull shape, but differ notably from those from Asia Minor, the Mid-dle East and Transcaucasia. Based on the current survey of badger specimens available in main world museums, we have recognized four distinctive, parapatric species:Meles meles, found in most of Europe;Meles leucurusfrom continental Asia;M. anakumafrom Japan; andM. canescensfrom Southwest Asia and the mountains of Middle Asia. These results are in agreement with those based on recent molecular data analyses. The morphological peculiarities and distribution range ofM. canescensare discussed. The origin and evolution ofMelesspecies, which is yet poorly understood, is also briefly discussed.