I’m reminded of the classic kangaroo-as-giant-mouse cartoons. From A Guinea Pig No Cage Would Hold:
The fossil of a 1,500-pound animal, 9 feet long, belonged to a rodent — an early ancestor of modern guinea pigs, researchers reported on Thursday.Living 8 million years ago in what is now Venezuela, the animal would have grazed and from a distance would have resembled a buffalo, the researchers report in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.
Found in a remote area in 2000, the fossil mystified scientists who finally determined it was a specimen of Phoberomys pattersoni.
‘Imagine a weird guinea pig but huge, with a long tail for balancing on its hind legs and continuously growing teeth,’ research team leader Marcelo Sanchez-Villagra of the University of Tubingen in Germany said in a statement.
At the time the area, 250 miles west of Caracas, was lush, with monster turtles, huge crocodiles and giant catfish in the rivers.