IMAGINE a hamster with horns on its nose and you’ve got the extinct horned gopher. Ceratogaulus is the only rodent and the smallest mammal we know with horns. But why would a hamster need them?
Palaeontologists have argued that males would have fought with their horns much like rhinos do today, or used them for burrowing. But Samantha Hopkins, of the University of California, Berkeley, has assessed all the evidence and come up with a different idea. She thinks they were defensive weapons (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, vol 272, p 1705).
Anatomy rules out digging, claims Hopkins.…
