This 5 March 2019 video from the USA, about Gargano, formerly an island, now an Italian mainland peninsula, says about itself:
The Island of Huge Hamsters and Giant Owls
Back in the late Miocene epoch, there was an island–or maybe a group of islands– in the Mediterranean Sea that was populated with fantastic giant beasts. It’s a lesson in the very strange, but very real, powers of natural selection.