Around 100 million years ago , a little juvenile frog was chasing a beetle along a branch before it took an unfortunate tumble and met a viscid end in exude sap along with its would - be prey .
While this might not have been the favour outcome for the frog , for scientists it has given us an incredibly rarefied insight into the mid - Cretaceous . This novel finding is the oldest and best - preserved case of afrog in amber ever discovered . Not only that , but it also provides the first verbatim evidence that ancient frog lived in wet , tropical timberland .
So well preserved is the amphibious vehicle that the researcher have even been able to officially describe it as an entirely newfangled mintage , Electrorana limoae . It is fall in by three other fond fossil of frogs trapped in amber , all discovered in Myanmar .
Weirdly though , these frogs did not see like the greenish tree diagram batrachian you ’re in all probability suppose right now , but rather like fire - bellied and midwife toads more usually constitute in Europe . This bring up doubt about the former evolution of frogs .
Even though most frog coinage alive today live in tropical rainforests that hug the equator , there are in reality few fossils of amphibians from these environments . This is think to be down to the fact that frogs are small and their bones do n’t often conserve well , mean that the absolute majority of the frog fossils we have come from larger , stocky metal money that lived in dryer , more temperate habitats .
“ It ’s almost unheard of to get a fossil frog from this time period that is small , has preservation of minor bones and is mostly three - dimensional . This is pretty special , ” explains David Blackburn , who co - authored the recent paper published inScientific Reports , in astatement . “ But what ’s most exciting about this animal is its circumstance . ”
“ These frogs were part of a tropical ecosystem that , in some ways , might not have been that different to what we find today – minus the dinosaurs . ”
During this flow , the shorelines would have been police bySpinosaurus , the flood plain dotted withGallimimus , and bee only just begin to evolve . Now , it ’s likely that the tropic rainforests would have been resonating with the trill and croak of calling frogs , not unlike some environments today .
The fossils were find in Myanmar , which is the source of some truly incredibly discovery of animals pin down in amber . Fromentire biddy , lizards , bamboo - similar plants , aquatic spider , and eventhe tail of a dinosaur , the deposits provide an awesome coup d’oeil into what the rainforests were like 100 million years ago when the dinosaurs were on top .
