Image of a giant beaver sculpted by Remie Bakker – Photo: Jochumhof, Steyl
The giant beaver was a permanent resident of the Netherlands two million years ago and was inadvertently named after Cuvier two centuries ago.
‘The extinct giant beaver is one of the most captivating mammals ever to have inhabited our country. It was a peculiar beaver, with a large head, small forelimbs, enormous paddle-like feet and a rounded tail. And despite its massive incisors, the animal was unable to fell trees’, reads the book De reuzenkopbever (The Giant Beaver), presented on 8 February in Rotterdam. It marks the conclusion of Project Reuzenbever, through which the Werkgroep Pleistocene Zoogdieren (Pleistocene Mammals Working Group) has, since 2020, been cataloguing all Dutch fossil material of the giant beaver Trogontherium cuvieri. The majority of the fossils come from the reclaimed Rotterdam beaches of Maasvlakte 1 and 2 and from former clay pits near Tegelen in the north of Limburg. As a tribute, a detailed bronze statue of the giant beaver has stood since 2024 in the Tiglientuin of the Jochumhof in Steyl (pictured). The species lived from 2.5 million years ago alongside the modern Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber), but became extinct 200,000 years ago. Dental anatomy indicates that the animal fed primarily on bankside plants such as common reed and sedges. Giant beavers are not much larger than Eurasian beavers and were therefore previously – and incorrectly – called giant beavers. That name is better suited to members of the (also extinct) North American beaver genus Castoroides, whose members were as large as bears. There is much to say about the scientific name: it fills an entire chapter of the book. The Russian collector Alexander Stroganov – a family connection also linked to Bœuf Stroganoff – gave the name Trogontherium in 1809 to a fossil beaver skull, derived from the Greek trógein and thèriun, meaning ‘to gnaw’ and ‘animal’. But because the French anatomist Georges Cuvier became involved in correspondence about the naming – and himself proposed the better name Castor trogontherium – his surname ended up in the species epithet through a series of misunderstandings. Dutch palaeobiologists have recently ensured that the accidental but established name Trogontherium cuvieri will endure (Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature, 31 December). A curious rodent, with an unintended tribute.