09-19-2003, 03:39 PM
<a href=http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/09/19/guinea.pig.ap/index.html target=new>Giant guinea pigs once roamed the Earth.</a>
He's definitely gonna need a bigger tube. :lol:
Quote:<b>WASHINGTON (AP)</b> -- It would be an exterminator's worst nightmare: A 1,545-pound (700-kilogram) rodent with a voracious appetite and big teeth.<img src=http://www.sjaa.net/aday99/parts/tube.jpg>
Resembling a guinea pig grown to the size of a buffalo, the animal lived millions of years ago in a South American swamp and is thought to be history's biggest rodent, researchers say this week in the journal Science.
\"Imagine a weird guinea pig, but huge, with a long tail for balancing on its hind legs and continuously growing teeth,\" said Marcelo R. Sanchez-Villagra of the University of Tubingen in Germany. He is the first author of the study.
The formal name of the rodent is <i>Phoberomys pattersoni</i>. The last term is in honor of Brian Patterson, a Harvard professor who led a fossil-collection expedition to Venezuela in the 1970s. Informally, the skeleton is called Goya.
He's definitely gonna need a bigger tube. :lol: