Generally when I hear the words "frog" and "dinosaur" in the same breath, I make an assumption as to which is doing the eating, and which is, well, doing the eaten. But maybe this is not always true....
Over the last 15 years or so, the bones of an ancient Madagascan frog have slowly been uncovered, revealing a frog which lived during the last few million years that dinosaurs ruled the earth.
Now the problem with fossils is that they are very rarely complete, and so scientists have to use what bones they have and try to work out what the rest of them were like and then try to work out what the creature itself was like. So slowly, but surely, scientists have worked out this was a large and toothy frog.
That's right, LARGE. About 25cm long - about double the size and weight of adult cane toads.
And lots of little sharp, sharp teeth.
Oh, and it had ARMOUR - big boney, spikey, armour plates.
So, BIG, ARMOURED, TOOTHY.
- It was a scary carnivore filled world back 65+ million years ago. And it looks like this amphibian's niche was a little higher up the food chain than you normally associate with Kermit and family.
The nearest modern frog in size and carnivorous tendencies - is the African Bullfrog (see right ->) Despite its looks, this blob of a beast is impressively mobile and aggressive - check out this David Attenborough youtube of males fighting over mates) It can ambush and eat small mammals, lizards, even birds. |
Surely even a big frog is no match for "He who has the teeth (but not so much the arms)". Surely hunting micey things is a bit more sensible? Frogs eating dinosaurs is just silly.
| But remember every creature was a baby once, and baby dinosaurs were small - and probably quite tasty to our ferocious muppet. To see an imagined version of a couple of our frogs in action, watch the fate of these dinosaur youngsters from about 4 minutes in! |
Now if you are a scientist trying to name such a monstrously, well, um, monstrous frog then what better name could you give it than:
- I feel a bad horror movie plot coming....