 Ancestor To The Guinea Pig
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Sept. 19, 2003 — A massive rodent the size of a buffalo that roamed Venezuela eight million years ago was an ancestor to the modern-day domestic guinea pig, according to research due to be published in the journal Science Friday.
In examining the giant rodent's fossil and plant evidence, three researchers have identified it as a sibling to the Pakarana dinomys, which was a close relative of the guinea pig.
The rodent, Phoberomys pattersoni, is the largest discovered rodent to have walked the earth. It weighed a hefty 1,543 pounds and grew more than 10 times the size of today's biggest rodent, the Capybara, the largest of which weighs 50 pounds.
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"Imagine a weird guinea pig, but huge, with a long tail for balancing on its hind legs and continuously growing teeth," researcher Marcelo Sanchez-Villagra explained.
"It was semi-aquatic, like the Capybara, and probably foraged along a riverbank," he added.
The research team discovered the fossil of the giant rodent in 2000 in a now arid region of Venezuela some 249 miles west of Caracas, in the town of Urumaco.
The research team was led by Sanchez-Villagra of Germany's Tubingen University, Orangel Aguilera of Venezuela's Universidad Nacional Experimental Francisco de Miranda and Ines Horovitz of the University of California.
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