Attention fellow biology lovers: it appears our biggest fears have been realized. In East Timor, in Southeast Asia, researchers have found fossils of rats up to ten times larger than modern rats. Fear not, however, as these rats are long gone. Researcher Dr. Julien Louys said that the rats lived tens of thousands of years ago, and that there is evidence of humans actually using them as a source of food. Many of the fossils were found with cut and burn marks. The findings came as a part of a project called From Sunda to Sahul. The purpose of the project team that found the rat fossils was to find when humans started moving through Southeast Asia.

Dr. Louys believes that the rats actually lived in Southeast Asia until about one thousand years ago. He cited their extinction as being cause by the introduction of metal tools into society in Southeast Asia, enabling the inhabitants to destroy forests faster and more completely. The team is working to find the impact of humans on the Southeast Asian Ecosystem, which is directly correlated to the rats. Once they find the exact conditions that existed in the area before the rats extinction, they will have a more exact idea of what happened that left the rats extinct.

The rats themselves are characterized as mega-fauna. Mega-fauna is a term that refers to animals that are abnormally large, and these rats fall under this category. The rats are part of a movement that has seen a mass extinction of mega-fauna animals across the globe. Although the most common explanation for this unfortunate trend is human influence- which undoubtedly played a role- the reality is that hard evidence points to climate change as having a larger impact. As more research takes place, it will become clearer as to the exact reason for extinction of these massive rats in Southeast Asia. What do you think caused the extinction? Feel free to comment!

A sketch of a Deinotherium, a mega-fauna species that went extinct about 12,000 years ago. Image from Wikipedia Commons.

 

 

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