Giant guinea pig
Friday, September 19, 2003
From: http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/09/19/guinea.pig.ap/index.html
 Description
The formal name is Phoberomys pattersoni. A 1,545-pound (700-kilogram)
rodent with a voracious appetite and big teeth. 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.
It was unearthed in a semi-desert area of Venezuela, about 250
miles (400 kilometers) west of Caracas. Seen from a distance,
it would have looked much more like a buffalo than like a scaled-up
guinea pig
Time
Six million
to eight million years ago Size
1.5 meters
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