Biggest rodent 'shrinks in size'

Source: BBC News

Page last updated at 23:56 GMT, Tuesday, 20 May 2008 00:56 UK

Biggest rodent 'shrinks in size'

The largest rodent ever recorded might not have been as monstrous
as was first suggested, a scientist has claimed.

A fossil skull belonging to the rodent Josephoartigasia monesi was
uncovered in Uruguay, where the beast roamed 2-4 million years ago.

It was first thought to have weighed a whopping one tonne, but new
estimates suggest the animal could have weighed as little as a
third of that.

Details appear in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Dr Virginie Millien, from McGill University in Montreal, Canada,
said the mathematical models originally used to calculate the
rodent's mass from its skull probably overestimated its body size.

-snip-

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7408743.stm

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Earlier thread: 1-ton rodent was size of small car (CNN)

further their studies of the largest possible rodents!!

I didn't know it was possible to shrink in anything else.