Giant Beavers: Mother Nature's Past Wonders

                There is a studious hush at the old museum, this afternoon. The lights reflect off the myriad glass display cases as guests moved across the glistening floor tiles to see all the many exhibits being offered.

                My friend and I are exploring the dinosaur gallery. In the middle of the large room are two life-sized dinosaur models frozen in mid-action. They look ready to pounce!

                Around the perimeter of the room there are all kinds of skeletons of the wild creatures that once lived around here. Some are standing up and full as in life. Others are lying down, still strewn and flattened into expanses of rock, just as they were found. Their mighty roars may have once filled the air, but they’ve been silent, now, for many, many millennia.

                On the far side of the room, my friend is studying an exhibit of prehistoric mammals.

                “Hmmmm,” She muses over one informational plaque, “The Giant Beaver. Height: 7 meters at the shoulder! Wow! That’s a huge beaver!

                Indeed! That translates to about 25 feet or two storeys tall, if you can imagine that! He must have had buck teeth the size of doors and been the only creature who could chew down a Sequoia Redwood Tree! And imagine the mighty, mighty SMACK!!!! he could have made with that mattress sized tail!

                Then, me, I had to go and ruin all the fun by squinting a little closer at that museum plaque.

                “Hey! That’s 0.7 meters! (2.3 feet)”

                “Oh, geez!” My friend laughed, “That makes a difference!”

                Well, it certainly does!

                Okay, so there were never any tyrannosaurus-sized beaver clomping through the wilderness at any time, to my friend’s chagrin. (Fur traders would have loved it, though. They could have gotten a year’s trapping done in one catch! Although I’m not suggesting that catch would have been particularly easy.)

                However, the Giant Beaver as he existed was nothing to be taken lightly.

                To put it in perspective, today’s modern beaver grows to be about 3.3 feet (100cm) in length. Standing on his haunches, the largest beaver might come up to the average adult’s waist. At 6.2 feet (1.9 meters, the average Giant Beaver on his haunches would tower over many full-grown men! The largest Giant Beavers grew to 7.2 feet (2.2 meters)! Now that really is one mighty beaver! Can you imagine this creature diving into the local pond, or even just strolling past you in the forest?

                The last of these animals disappeared around 10,000 years ago, and like most creatures who disappeared that long ago, very little can possibly be known about them.

It’s easy to imagine massive, earth-changing dams criss-crossing the country, but the scientists say the animals don’t appear to have had the teeth for such work. Besides, no conclusive evidence of giant dams has ever been found. However, one site in Ohio was identified as the possible remains of a Giant Beaver lodge in 1912. A Giant Beaver’s skull was found resting in a peaty bed. But with the animals gone for so many centuries, there’s been more than ample time for all traces of their activity to decay away.

It’s also easy to imagine the gunshot crack of his huge tail on the surface of the water when danger approached. But did that sound ever occur? Because so much of the tail is soft tissue, scientists cannot tell by fossil remains alone whether the Giant Beaver had the broad, flat tail that the modern beaver is so famous for. All the skeleton shows for a tail is a narrow row of bones that look like an extension of the spine. This is true of both the modern and prehistoric species.

Whether they behaved or entirely looked like the modern-day beaver or not, it’s hard to argue that they still must have been incredible animals to see. For now, we’ll have to be satisfied with marvelling at the traces they left behind and let Mother Nature keep some of her secrets hidden in the far, distant past. Just where she likes them.

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Photo by C. Horwitz and Steven G. Johnson
 

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