Enormous Dormice Once Roamed Mediterranean Islands

Pleistocene dormouse Leithia melitensis was the size of a house cat. New computer-aided reconstructions show a skull as long as an entire modern dormouse.

It’s a textbook example of “island gigantism,” in which, biologists hypothesize, fewer terrestrial predators and more pressure from predatory birds selects for a much larger body size in some island organisms.