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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Giant extinct rodent was all brawn and little brain

A South American rodent had the heft of a Saint Bernard dog — and a brain the weight of a golf ball.
Artistic reconstruction of N. Acreensis (by Márcio L. Castro).

The now-extinct Neoepiblema acreensis (artist’s impression) is one of the largest rodents ever to have lived in South America, but its brain was minuscule for its size. Credit: J. D. Ferreira et al./Biol. Lett. (CC BY 4.0)

Behold Neoepiblema acreensis, an 80-kilogram rodent related to chinchillas that lived 10 million years ago in what is now Brazil. José Ferreira and Leonardo Kerber at the Federal University of Santa Maria in Brazil and their colleagues were curious about the brains of these beasts, so they used computerized tomography to peer inside two fossil skulls.

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Nature 578, 340 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-00376-y

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