Beelzebufo, the giant frog

@robot

Published in 

Nature

 · 28 Nov 2022

The Beelzebufo is a particularly large species of prehistoric frog described for the first time in 2008. The discovery represents a true biogeographical puzzle and prompts speculation about the existence in the Upper Cretaceous of a physical connection between South America and Madagascar.

The first fossil remains of the largest frog ever to have lived our planet were discovered in Madagascar by a team of Stony Brook University paleontologists led by David Krause, who describe them in a paper published in the online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Beelzebufo ampigna, as the researchers called the new species, lived between 60 and 70 million years ago, was about 40 centimeters long and weighed around five kilograms. Singularly (and in spite of that "-bufo" present in the chosen genus name, which would suggest an affiliation with bufonids), the new species would be on the same phylogenetic branch as the leptodactylids still living in South America today, and in particular with those of the genus Ceratophrys, also known as horned frogs, which spend much of their time hidden in the moist, muddy soil, leaving little more than their snout sticking out as they wait for prey to pass by.

The Beelzebufo, the giant prehistoric frog

The animal, which had a very leathery back, had a particularly large mouth and powerful mandibles that probably allowed it to prey on lizards, small vertebrates and perhaps even the infants of small dinosaurs.

This discovery represents a real biogeographical puzzle, especially because of the poverty of fossils related to these amphibians throughout the Southern Hemisphere

said in 2008 Krause, who went on to note that some geologists have speculated the existence during the Upper Cretaceous of a physical connection between South America and Madagascar that must have cut off the African continent, but involved Antarctica, which at that time would have had a much warmer climate than today.

Further information

The genus name is a pun between a devil's name (beelzebub) and bufo (toad in Latin). The species name ampinga is a Malagasy word meaning "shield".

Fossil fragments show that the prehistoric frog could grow up to 40 centimeters long (a larger size than any anuran alive today) and probably could weigh about 4 kilograms. It has been assumed that the Beelzebufo could also swallow baby dinosaurs.

Today, the closest living animals to the Beelzebufo are the Ceratophrys, the "horned frogs" of South America. This has been interpreted as evidence that in the Late Cretaceous, Madagascar and South America were still connected.