hystricognath
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: 0.00 in modern English
25
Scrabble Score
13
Letters
3
Syllables
11
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Any member of the infraorder Hystricognathi of rodents, distinguished from other rodents by the bone structure of their skulls.
Example Sentences
- "The New World hystricognath rodents (= caviomorphs) today represent one of the most diverse and widespread suborders among the over 800 mammal species of South America (Woods, 1982)."
- "The situation is similar with respect to rodents, given that the earliest undisputed hystricognaths are from the Oligocene of Pakistan and Egypt (ca. 35Ma), with the possibility of a Middle Eocene origin for the group (Bryant and McKenna 1995; Marivaux et al. 2002)."
- "The hystricognaths include several lines that radiated in Africa and South America in the Oligocene and Miocene.[…]The largest hystricognath group is the Caviomorpha, the South American guinea pigs, capybaras, chinchillas and New World porcupines."