. This might offer clues as to how these animals became extinct as agricultural societies and the introduction of animals like domestic dogs, pigs, and macaque monkeys to the Philippines occurred around that time.
DISCOVERY. Lower molar teeth of the new giant cloud rat, Carpomys new species , compared with the two living species of Carpomys plus their close relative, Musseromys .The discovery of these fossil cloud rats is an affirmation of the faunal diversity in the Philippines, said Lawrence Heaney, Negaunee Curator of Mammals at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, USA.
He added:"These recently extinct fossil species not only show that biodiversity was even greater in the very recent past, but that the two that became extinct just a few thousand years ago were giants among rodents, both weighing about a kilogram. They were big enough that it might have been worthwhile to hunt and eat them."
She also said that smaller-sized mammals like these fossil cloud rats were understudied"probably because researchers were focused on open-air sites where the large fossil mammal faunas were known to have been preserved, rather than the careful sieving of cave deposits that preserve a broader size-range of vertebrates including the teeth and bones of rodents."