Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin recently rediscovered a new species of ancient beaver in their fossil collection, and decided to give it a name in honor of the most famous beaver from Texas.
According to a press release, the beaver has been named Anchitheriomys buceei, or “A. buceei” for short.
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Per KRLD, while driving down a highway in 2020, Steve May, a research associate at the UT Jackson School of Geosciences, spotted a Buc-ee's billboard that said "This is Beaver Country."
He says the phrase brought to mind the Texas beaver fossils he had been studying at UT.
A. buceei lived in Texas about 15 million years ago, and while it wouldn’t look much different than your beavers of today, one key difference is size.
A. buceei was bigger – about 30% larger than modern beavers, though still much smaller than the bear-size beavers that lived in North America during the last Ice Age.
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