Giant rat fossil found in Venezuela

Scientists in Venezuela say they have found the fossilized skeleton of a giant rodent that lived some eight million years ago.

The remains indicate that the rat-like creature was approximately three metres long, more than a metre high, and weighed five hundred kilograms.

A zoologist, Orangel Aguilera, told a Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional that the find was significant because it was the first time a complete skeleton of such an animal had been discovered.

Experts say similarities between the rodent and fossils found in the Brazilian state of Acre in the Amazon add to the hypothesis that in prehistoric times a broad river flowed parallel to the Andes and into the Caribbean sea.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service