🦖🐹 Happy Dinosaur Day!, Piggies & Pals! 🐹 💚 💚 💚 🦕 🦕 🦖 🦖 🦖 🥕 🦕

Sure, the Tyrannosaurus rex and the Jurassic Park denizens get all the press, but did you know that the largest rodent ever to walk the Earth was a distant cousin of today's guinea pigs?

Meet Phoberomys pattersoni, a prehistoric giant that lived in South America about 8 million years ago. It was about the size of a buffalo, weighing an incredible 1,545 pounds (700 kg)—more than 10 times heavier than today's rodent heavyweight, the 110-pound (50 kg) capybara!

Paleontologist Marcelo Sánchez-Villagra described it perfectly:

"Imagine a weird guinea pig, but huge, with a long tail for balancing on its hind legs and continuously growing teeth."

Well, there it is then!

Fortunately for our laps, cuddles, and veggie budgets, modern guinea pigs took a much smaller evolutionary path! Still, it's fun to imagine what a 1,500-pound wheek might have sounded like.

WHEEK! WHEEK!