Ancient Beavers Take Silver in Log-Chomping Olympics

sea-maid submitted, created time 3 months 5 days (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)

Call it The Great Gnaw-Off. By studying logs chomped nearly five million years ago, researchers have discovered that ancient beavers weren't nearly as expert lumberjacks as their modern cousins. Indeed, the evidence suggests that they would have been trounced by today's beavers in a tree-cutting Olympics. Researchers say the finding provides rare insight into how one of the animal kingdom's busiest critters may have shaped ancient landscapes

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