Like a guinea pig, only much, much bigger. Reseachers describe a giant ancient rodent with tusk-like teeth
A giant rodent that roamed South America about three million years ago stood as tall as a human and had teeth that resembled elephant tusks.And now scientists believe that it used those teeth for more than just eating. Their findings reveal this prehistoric rodent also used it huge teeth for digging and fighting....
A giant rodent that roamed South America about three million years ago stood as tall as a human and had teeth that resembled elephant tusks.
And now scientists believe that it used those teeth for more than just eating. Their findings reveal this prehistoric rodent also used it huge teeth for digging and fighting.
Dr. Philip Cox is an anatomist at the University of York in England. He's the lead author of a study of the giant rodent, Josephoartigasia Monesi, which is published in the Journal of Anatomy.
University of York anatomist Dr. Philip Cox [PHOTO c/o Philip Cox]
He tells As It Happens guest host Laura Lynch: "This is the largest rodent that ever lived...it's around one tonne in weight...so that's about the size, or the weight at least, of a modern day buffalo...and like all rodents, it had some very large teeth...the incisors grew throughout life and were sort of curve-shaped and stick out the front of the mouth."
Cox adds: "Maybe in the same way that male elephants clash their tusks together in these alpha-male fights...perhaps these large rodents, the big males, might have come together, mouths open, to sort of clash in some kind of dominance type of fight to allow them to get access to females."
He says that this ancient rodent was likely made extinct about two million years ago due to climate change and competition from other new mammals that came down from North America after the Central American land bridge was formed connecting the North and South.
Our guest, Dr. Cox, eye-to-ye with a large-horned cow near Leceister Midlands, England [PHOTO c/o Philip Cox]
Click here to see more about Dr. Philip Cox's research project on the giant rodent: Josephoartigasia Monesi.