MANILA – Scientists have discovered three extinct species of giant cloud rat, more commonly known as “buot,” in the Philippines.
This after archaeologists from the University of the Philippines, National Museum of the Philippines, and Field Museum of Natural History in Illinois, USA analyzed fossil and subfossils found inside Callao Cave in Cagayan.
The study — led by Janine Ochoa, Armand Mijares, Philip Piper, Marian Reyes, and Lawrence Heany — was published in the Oxford Academic’s Journal of Mammalogy on Friday.
The scientists identified the different species through their body size, distinctive dental morphology, and habitat.
More than 50 fragments of bone and teeth were found during the course of the study, according to a press release of the Field Museum.
Among the newly-discovered extinct species of Phloeomyini or cloud rats are: Batomys cagayanensis, Carpomys dakal, and Crateromys ballik. Their scientific names are derived from Philippine languages.
The B. cagayanensis is named after the archaeological site where it was found, the Cagayan region.
The C. dakal, the largest of the fossil cloud rats, got its name because “it is much larger compared to the known living species in the same genus.” In several Northen Luzon dialects, “dakal” means big or large.
The C. baliik, was slightly smaller than the living Crateromys species in Luzon. “Baliik” means small for Dupaningan Agta, an ethnic group living in the same region.
These three newly-discovered species of giant cloud rats lived with Homo luzonensis, believed to be the oldest human inhabitants of the Philippines.
Of these species, two remained present until the age of late Holocene (approximately 2,000 years before present day) where multiple exotic mammal species lived within Luzon.
Piper, one of the researchers, said “Our records demonstrate that these giant rodents were able to survive the profound climatic changes from the Ice Age to current humid tropics that have impacted the earth over tens of millennia. The question is what might have caused their final extinction?”
The scientists believed the activities of the modern human age caused the extinction of the three giant cloud rat species
“New cultural practices (such as making pottery) became evident, suggesting that modern humans played a role in their extinction,” an excerpt from the study read.
“That seems significant, because that is roughly the same time that pottery and Neolithic stone tools first appear in the archeological record, and when dogs, domestic pigs, and probably monkeys were introduced to the Philippines, probably from Borneo,” said Mijares, a professor of UP Diliman’s Archaeological studies program.
Currently, there are 18 species of cloud rats exclusively found in the Philippines.
They live in high-elevation, mossy forests unlike their extinct counterparts that inhabited lowland forests filled with limestones.
The giant cloud rat weighs 18 grams to 2.7 kilograms. It eats leaves, buds, and seeds.
“Our discoveries suggest that future studies that look specifically for fossils of small mammals may be very productive, and may tell us a great deal about how environmental changes and human activities have impacted the really exceptionally distinctive biodiversity of the Philippines,” said the study’s lead author Ochoa.
