Fossil crowns massive rabbit 'king'

The rabbit skeleton shown in the "Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology" is of an animal that stood about 3 feet tall on its hind legs.

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The rabbit skeleton shown in the "Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology" is of an animal that stood about 3 feet tall on its hind legs.

It's the largest rabbit discovered to date, according to the study, which appears in the March issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

"When I found the first bone, I was not aware what this bone represented," says study lead author Josep Quintana of the Institut Català de Paleontologia in Barcelona. "I thought it was a bone of the giant Minorcan turtle."

Minorca is a small island in the Mediterranean Sea off the Spanish coast.

Long extinct, this unusually massive rabbit weighed 26 pounds and was about 3 feet tall when standing on its hind legs. The rabbit, officially called Nuralagus rex, has been nicknamed the "Minorcan King of the Rabbits."

It lived about 3 million to 5 million years ago.

"Nobody knows what might have caused its extinction," though climatic changes are unlikely, says study co-author Meike Kohler, also of the Institut Catala de Paleontologia. He says one possibility is that the rabbit was "outcompeted" by a goat that also inhabited Minorca.

Quintana and his team discovered that this giant rabbit also couldn't hop. The short, stiff spine of the rabbit would have made jumping difficult, he says, unlike the long, springy spine of a rabbit today.

"I think that Nuralagus rex would be a rather clumsy rabbit walking," says Quintana. "Imagine a beaver out of water."

It also had relatively small ears for its size.

The rabbit king may be one of the oldest known cases of the so-called "island rule" in mammals.

This rule states that typically smaller animals evolve to grow much bigger when on islands (and vice versa). This size change on islands may be associated with a lack of predators.

Some of the rabbit's neighbors on the island included a huge bat, a large mouse and a giant tortoise.

"As evolution has shown repeatedly, strange things happen on islands," says paleontologist Brian Kraat of the Western University of Health Science in Pomona, Calif., who was not part of the study.

Quintana is so excited about his discovery, he thinks it might even make a good island mascot. "I would like to use N. rex to lure students and visitors to Minorca," he says.

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