title: Evolution. Enhanced: A rodent as big as a buffalo.
abstract: The largest living rodent is the South American capybara, a creature the size of a sheep that unlike smaller rodents stands on relatively straight legs. However, as Alexander explains in his Perspective, a new fossil find in Venezuela (Sánchez-Villagra et al.) reveals that the capybara would be dwarfed by Phoberomys, a giant rodent the size of a buffalo that lived during the Miocene Epoch.
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D001824:Body Constitution; D001835:Body Weight; D004032:Diet; D004734:Energy Metabolism; D005269:Femur / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D005285:Fermentation; D005580:Fossils; D006614:Hindlimb / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D008124:Locomotion; D012377:Rodentia / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000378:metabolism; D014070:Tooth / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D014687:Venezuela