Rat-Squirrel Not Extinct After All:
The long-whiskered rodent made international headlines last spring when biologists declared they’d discovered a brand new species, nicknamed the Laotian rock rat.It turns out the little guy isn’t new after all, but a rare kind of survivor: a member of a family until now known only from fossils.
Nor is it a rat. This species, called Diatomyidae, looks more like small squirrels or tree shrews, said paleontologist Mary Dawson of Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Natural History.