Big, Big, Rat
Ok, I’ve seen rats around here. The usual ‘Norway’ type that infests all the world, and a local type that is a bit smaller, brown, with rounded ears. Neither are particularly welcome in my yard. But one of their ancestors could have bullied his way into the house had he a mind to …
In a COSMOS article, they describe a rat-like rodent that lived four million years ago in South America, that would scare the b-jesus out of anyone. The skull was half a meter long. They estimate the entire beast would have weighed about 700 Kilos (almost a ton).
These monsters lived long after the dinosaurs went extinct of course, or they would have been quickly eaten-up as dino-snacks. They did have to contend with three-meter tall birds and ancient saber-toothed relatives of the opposum that were fiercer predators than most of the mammals around at that time. I’m kind of glad something or other found a way to drive those huge rats extinct, and begin to think that maybe extinction isn’t always such a bad thing.