 Many specimens and possibly captures in surveys of other mammals in Western Australia were initially identified or presumed to be "Rattus fuscipes", including the 1931 Savage collection received by the state's museum.The first rediscovery was in Victoria, at The Grampians in 1961 and then in lowland heaths to the south.New records emerged from surveys in Western Australia, where it was rediscovered in 1987, and at Kangaroo Island, off the coast of South Australia, at the start of the twenty first century.