The Rat History Chronicles #1 by Anthony Escujuri

The Rat History Chronicles

Chapter One: A Land Before Time

We’ve all been waiting, and it’s finally here. It’s time to let those angelic little ratties out of their cages and celebrate the first ever Rat History Month. Here at iGotRats.com we could not be any more delighted to sponsor this momentous occasion. For the next several weeks, Rat Talk will be delving deep into the historic and prehistoric events that brought rats into our lives. Get ready because it’s going to be a wild ride.

I believe it’s best we start at the beginning. Recently archaeologists have found the remains of a creature hypothesized to be the oldest known common ancestor to all placental mammals, and to their astonishment it looks unmistakably like a rat:

Rats, humans, and even whales evolved from a creature much like the one shown in the composite drawing above. The fossils of this tiny, ancient beast were found deep in the cliffs of Dorset on the southern coast of England and are dated to 145 million years ago. Scientists refer to this ancient group of mammals as eutherians and explain that they lived in a diverse environment of dinosaurs, lizards, frogs, fish, and turtles (1). The asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs also rendered most mammals extinct. Marsupials had a 90% loss in diversity, but amazingly only 15% of eutherians lineages were affected. The survival of the eutherians can not be attributed to their size or diet because many animals of the same size and with the same diet went extinct (2). I believe it was their smart little rattie brains that kept them alive and kicking. As the earth recovered from the devastating impact, the eutherians flourished evolving into the countless species that dominate the earth today, including us and our beloved pets (2).