The Colossus Of Rodents
Forget that old lighthouse/statue thingee that stood in Rhodes for a while before it fell down. This is really big. A one ton rat once munched pretty much whatever it wanted to in South America.
The newly-identified species is the greatest-known member of the order Rodentia and by comparison makes the biggest rodent alive today, the 60-kilo (132-pound) capybara, look like a pygmy shrew.
The skull of the extraordinary beast was found in a broken boulder on Kiyu Beach on the coast of Uruguay's River Plate region, palaeontologists reported in a study on Wednesday.
Measuring a whopping 53 centimetres (21 inches), the skull has massive incisors several centimetres long.
Despite this fearsome look, the creature was not carnivorous and looked more hippo-like than rat-like.
Well, ok, they don't think it was all that good at chewing, since it had relatively small teeth. But still, a one ton rat would be very large, indeed. Why that's nearly half the size of a New York City sewer rat.
By feeblemind, Wednesday, 16 January , 2008 @ 11:11 am
I bet that rat could eat a lot of brie. It would be right at home in the congressional cafeteria. Off topic: Again via Drudge, there is a UK Daily Mail story about Hungarian researchers that claim to have a computer program that translates dog barks. As you are a dog person, I thought you might be intetrested.
By Uncle Pinky, Wednesday, 16 January , 2008 @ 12:45 pm
Feeblemind, there is one problem with that. I don’t speak any Hungarian beyond “goulash” “sor” and “Pils.”
By Bleepless, Wednesday, 16 January , 2008 @ 1:49 pm
That rt is almost as big as a Ron Paul supporter.
By martian, Wednesday, 16 January , 2008 @ 3:31 pm
Can you imagine the size of the mousetrap? An engineering nightmare!