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New York (pte026/13.05.2005/12:28) - A travelling scientist was recently bemused when he saw a totally new species of rodent on display at a south-east Asian market stall.
"It was for sale on a table next to some vegetables," says conservation biologist Robert Timmins, "And I knew immediately it was something I had never seen before."
The rock rat is known as 'kha-nyou' in Laos and is being sold in the Khammouan region. It is related to guinea pigs and chinchillas, but looks more like a large, dark rat-squirrel--cross. It measures about 40 centimetres from nose to tail, has a thick, furry tail, short limbs and large paws.
With the help of locals, Timmins - from the Wildlife Conservation Society http://www.wcs.org , based in New York City - trapped the rodent for further study. The kha-nyou, which is roasted on a skewer, hasn't been seen in its natural habitat and relatively little is known about how it lives.
The biologist reported his exciting new discovery in the journal Systematics and Biodiversity. "To find something so distinct in this day and age is just extraordinary," Timmins said.
Laonastes aenigmamus is unusual because it isn't closely related to other rodents.
Timmins and his team think that the newly discovered rodent might have diverged from the Hystricognathi, a group of mostly African and South American rodents, tens of millions of years ago. Moles, rats, guinea pigs and capybaras, porcupines and chinchillas constitute this group.
Rodent expert and study co-author Paulina Jenkins of the Natural History Museum in London, UK said that the discovery "is particularly interesting because it may throw new light on theories about the evolution and past distribution of Old and New World rodents."
As yet researches have too little information about the Laonastes to know whether it is an endangered species. However they believe that it mainly lives in rocky limestone outcrops in the Khammouan National Biodiversity Conservation Area, which means that it's likely not to be that wide spread.
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