|
|
Tweet |
Photos Taken of ‘Living Fossil’ in Laos
"These images are extremely important scientifically, showing as they do an animal (with) such markedly distinctive anatomical and functional attributes,"
- Mary Dawson, curator emeritus of vertebrate paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh
Tallahassee, FL - The first pictures showing a live specimen of a rodent species once thought to have been extinct for 11 million years have been taken by a retired Florida State University professor and a Thai wildlife biologist.
Known as Diatomyidae, scientists have nicknamed it the Laotian rock rat. The creature is not really a rat but a member of a rodent family once known only from fossils.