Andres Rinderknecht started as an amateur collector digging fossils from the cliffs around the Rio de La Plata in Uruguay. He was hired by the National Museum of Natural History in Montevideo in 1992. Currently Rinderknecht holds a degree in Biological Sciences at the Faculty of Sciences. A specialist in vertebrate paleontology, Andres is responsible for the department of Paleontology at the National Museum of Natural History and Anthropology. He has participated in national and international scientific conferences and published several research papers in the area of his specialty.

Rinderknecht and his team discovered fossil evidence of the biggest species of rodent ever found, one that scurried across wooded areas of South America about four million years ago, when the continent was not connected to North America. The skull of this giant creature was researched by Rinderknecht and his colleagues, and was published in “Proceedings of the Royal Society B”. Rinderknecht has since been interviewed by The New York Times, USA Today, the BBC, and other world news affiliates, bringing great publicity to this extraordinary find.