Ideas

Enormous Dormice Once Roamed Mediterranean Islands
Evolution

Enormous Dormice Once Roamed Mediterranean Islands

by Michael Garfield
Jul 23, 02020

Pleistocene dormouse Leithia melitensis was the size of a house cat. New computer-aided reconstructions show a skull as long as an entire modern dormouse.

It’s a textbook example of “island gigantism,” in which, biologists hypothesize, fewer terrestrial predators and more pressure from predatory birds selects for a much larger body size in some island organisms.

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