Giant beavers had hidden vocal talents

LAS VEGAS – Blessed with a hidden chamber in their oversized skulls, extinct giant beavers may have created a unique Ice Age call of the wild.

Detailed CT scans reveal a dead-end passageway leading from the back of the animal’s skull toward its face. That chamber connects via a long, narrow slit to another passage going straight through the beaver’s skull from throat to nose, vertebrate paleontologist Caroline Rinaldi reported November 2 at a meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.