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Pacarana
The pacarana (Dinomys branickii) is a rare and slow-moving nocturnal rodent found only in tropical forests of the western Amazon River basin and adjacent foothills of the Andes Mountains from northwestern Venezuela and Colombia to western Bolivia, including the yungas. One place that it is common is Cotapata National Park in Bolivia. It is known as the pacarama (false paca) by native Indians due to its superficial similarity to a different caviomorph rodent, the paca.
It is a hystricognath rodent, and the sole extant member of the family Dinomyidae in Caviomorpha; initially, it was placed with true mice. Some evidence places the pacarana as closely related to the prehistoric giant rodents that inhabited South America millions of years ago, such as Phoberomys pattersoni and Josephoartigasia monesi.
It has a chunky body and is large for a rodent, weighing up to and measuring up to in length, not including the thick, furry tail.
External links
Pacaran on on Mammal Species of the World
http://www.animalinfo.org/species/rodent/dinobran.htm Pacarana on Animal Info
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Pacarana
