One Big Critter »
Perusing the paper today, I came across an article about a newly discovered rodent fossil. Nothing particularly special in finding a rodent fossil, I thought at first. Until I read the article. Seems that researchers in Venezuela have discovered the remains of a rodent that may have weighed 1500 pounds or more. Holy cow. Find that as roadkill and your family eats for months.
It seems that everything was bigger and meaner back then. Six to eight million years ago, not only was there the giant guinea pig, but crocodiles grew to more than 33 feet long. There was apparently a large carnivore called a marsupial cat. If that's not enough, there were also allegedly giant flesh-eating birds called phorracoids. Good thing Raquel didn't come along until a few million years later. She would've been toast.
I also can now understand why cats are so determined to get the mouse. If the rodents used to be hundreds of times your size, it only makes sense to get after them once they've shrunk down to the size we see today. I'd make the most of that opportunity too. No telling when mother nature might turn her back on you again.
Anyway, apparently this herbivore singlehandedly turned what was once a forested and swampy area into a semidesert. Okay, I made up that last part. But a rodent that big is going to eat a lot of vegetation. It could have happened that way.
