Extinct “Super-Rats” Unearthed in East Timor
In the 2003 horror movie Willard, a lonely young man, played by Crispin Glover, develops an unusual relationship with the rats inhabiting his house. He trains them to obey his every command, ending up as the leader of his own “rat army,” which he uses to get revenge on his callous boss.
With their sharp teeth combined, his army of rats are a murderous force. Entertaining though the film is, what would have made it more exciting and gory is if the rats had been bigger – such as the size of the ones recently discovered in East Timor by a team of Australian archaeologists.
The giant species of extinct rat, the bones of which were unearthed in a remote cave, was forty times bigger than its modern relative, with a body weight of around 6kg, making it the biggest rat that ever lived. The finding was detailed earlier this week in the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History.











