Archeologist discovered a giant Rat fossil in East Timor, which weigh 10 times bigger than modern Rat

21 Feb 2019

A group of archaeologists (Australian National University) discovered an ancient rat bone weighing 11 pounds. They call it as “mega-fauna”, which means giant animal. The word “mega-fauna” also meant for large mammal or birds lived in early age. It proves that our ancient rat have got bigger body and ten times bigger than modern one. According the Wikipedia, the giant rat or large rodent was lived in tropical and sub-tropical locations. These large size creature later vanished due to bad climate conditions.

Julien Louys published an image, in which you can see the comparison between both the bones. The newly discovered fossil is about 5 kilograms, whereas modern rats are about half kilos-said Julien Louys. He continues, the early age of humans in East Timor was 46000 years ago and they might be living with the large sized rats. The researchers heading towards a reason behind the large sized rats. They confirm with the cut and burn marks, humans of old age were eating large sized rats.

The archeologist aims to find the exact view of humans and ecosystems, when they first step on the south Asia islands.

Julien Louys stated,

“Everything from the very earliest deposits, which were around about 46,000 years old all the way up to about 1,000 years ago, we find them in deposits and there’s evidence of chewing marks. The funny thing is that they are co-existing up until about a thousand years ago. The reason we think they became extinct is because that was when metal tools started to be introduced in Timor, people could start to clear forests at a much larger scale”

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