Five-million-year-old monster bunny couldn't hop

[Ian David]

A creature initially mistaken for an extinct tortoise has turned out to be a giant bunny that had tiny ears and couldn't hop.

The 5-million-year-old remains of Nuralagus rex were found on the Spanish island of Minorca by independent researcher Josep Quintana. At an estimated 12 kilograms, it was around 10 times the weight of wild Spanish rabbits today.

Quintana came across the first fossil in the early 1990s when he was 19. He initially thought it was part of an extinct Minorcan tortoise. Later, Meike Köhler and Salvador Moya-Sola of the Autonomous University of Barcelona's Catalan Institute of Paleontology identified it as a giant rabbit.

Now the three have uncovered enough fossils to reconstruct the entire animal and name it. They say its closest relative was Alilepus, a now-extinct genus whose members were about a tenth the size of N. rex and lived in Eurasia and North America at the time.

More:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20273



A reconstruction of Nuralagus rex in a landscape with a living European rabbit in the foreground for comparison.
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/958021--fossil-of-giant-rabbit-discovered-on-island

[slackmaster]

1. Imagine the size its pellets must have been!

Softball or larger.

[LiberalEsto]

2. I wouldn't want that in my garden

The regular-size rabbit is bad enough.

[The Doctor.]

3. I now understand that scene from 'The Holy Grail'.

[Night Crawler]

4. I wonder if that's where the fable of the Tortoise and the Hare

originates?

And the article doesn't answer the question: Was the Minorcan tortoise able to hop?

[Ian David]

5. Only when it strapped a rocket on its back...

... and I can see why scientists were so confused:

[hifiguy]

6. Some of my favorite Bugs cartoons

are the duels with Cecil Turtle (or was that Mitch McConnell?).

[shireen]

7. hoppity hop & R nt

[mysuzuki2]

8. Was his name Harvey?

Sorry, but someone had to bring that up.