Researchers have found three new species of giant cloud rats. These rats were discovered to be twice the size of a grey squirrel. The team said that these “giant cloud rat species” roamed in the Philippines around 10,000 years ago. The analysis is based on the bones and teeth of the rats.
The study published in the Journal of Mammology states that these species were fluffy and had big tails. The remains of the giant cloud rat were discovered in caves in the Philippines after the rodent went extinct a few thousand years ago.
Humans major cause for extinction?
The researchers also believe that humans had a major role in their extinction as the timeline coincides with the appearance of pottery and Neolithic stone tools. It is also the time when dogs and domestic pigs were introduced to the region.
Larry Heaney, the curator of mammals at the Field Museum in Chicago, suggests that big rats might have appeared like a groundhog with a tail similar to a squirrel. The fossils also indicate that biodiversity was greater even in the recent past, he added.
“Cloud rats eat plants, and they’ve got great big pot bellies that allow them to ferment the plants that they eat, kind of like cows. They have big fluffy or furry tails. They’re really quite cute”, Heaney said. “Their abrupt disappearance just a few thousand years ago leaves us to wonder if they were big enough that it might have been worthwhile to hunt and eat them,” he added.
70,000 years old species
Some fossils of the cloud rat were discovered in the same layer as the homo luzonesis, making the species around 70,000 years old. Janine Ochoa of the University of the Philippines said that had fossil remains of large mammals on Luzon island; however, there was no evidence for smaller mammals, until now.
“The reason is probably that research had focused on open-air sites where the large fossil mammal faunas were known to have been preserved, rather than the careful sieving of cave deposits that preserve a broader size-range of vertebrates including the teeth and bones of rodents”, she said.
