Meet Guinzilla

by TIM UTTON, Daily Mail

It was a direct ancestor of the guinea pig - but it was hardly a cuddly pet.

At nine feet long, standing as tall as a buffalo and with a fearsome set of eight-inch teeth, it would have terrified the life out of anyone.

That was "Guinzilla" - the biggest, toughest rodent ever to walk the earth.

The beast, which roamed in herds over South American grassland around eight million years ago, has given new insights into the extremes of evolution.

Dr Marcelo Sanchez-Villagra, whose research is published today in Science magazine, said: "Imagine a weird guinea pig, but huge, with a long tail for balancing on its hind legs and continuously growing teeth. It's very impressive to find such a large rodent."

The skeleton of the creature was discovered last year in Venezuela and given the Latin name Phoberomys pattersoni.

At around 1,545lbs - nearly three-quarters of a ton - it was ten times heavier than its closest living relative, the capybara, a sheepsized rodent which still lives in South America.

Dr Sanchez-Villagra said: "It was semi-aquatic, like the capybara, and probably foraged along a river bank. Eight million years ago this was a place of giants."

Much of its time would have been spent dodging other prehistoric Venezuelans, including 30ft-long crocodiles, huge flesh-eating flightless birds called phorracoids, and carnivorous marsupial cats.

It is not known why Guinzilla became extinct, but the collision of north and south America three million years ago would have meant the arrival of predators such as wolves and bears from north America.

Small animals would have been able to escape by running down holes, and large grazing creatures such as antelopes would have been able to outrun a pursuer.

But Guinzilla, named after the prehistoric monster star of the Godzilla movies, may have been too slow to run and too big to hide. Andrew Sugden, an evolutionary biology expert and international managing editor of Science, described the find as a "milestone".

He said: "This giant rodent more than doubles the size range of this remarkable family of animals".

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