The biggest rat which ever walked the earth

Can you imagine a rat weighing 1 tonne, and what your cat would do?

Truly the King Kong of the rodents, luckily it died between 2 and 4 million years ago, long before humans appeared on Earth. It used to roam the swamps in South America.

The skull is 20 inches long, suggesting that its body is 10 feet long!

Compare the size of its skull with a modern rat

The skull was found recently on a beach in Uruguay, and it’s confirmed to be a new species, dubbed Josephoartigasia Monesi, a member of the order Rodentia.

The biggest modern rat, the already-huge 60 kilogram capybara, seems very small in comparison.

Before this, the biggest rat ever found was the Phoberomys pattersoni which was found in Venezuela in 2003, weighing an estimated 700 kilograms.

An artist’s impression of the monster’s face would’ve looked like (looks more like a hippopotamus than a rat, doesn’t it)?

Now here’s a good news: it was not carnivorous, since its grinding teeth are miniscule. That means it only ate, albeit in large amounts, soft vegetation, fruit and plants in the deltas.

Source
Yahoo! News, 15th Jan 2008

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