Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Triadobatrachus is an extinct genus of salientian frog-like amphibians, including only one known species, Triadobatrachus massinoti. It is the oldest member of the frog lineage known, and an excellent example of a transitional fossil. It lived during the Early Triassic about 250 million years ago, in what is now Madagascar.
Scientists in Argentina have discovered excellently preserved fossil remains of the oldest-known tadpole, the larval stage of a large frog species that lived alongside dinosaurs about 161 million ...
In 2024, a tadpole specimen of N. degiustoi (MPM-PV 23540) was reported from the La Matilde Formation of Argentina, representing the oldest known tadpole and the first stem-anuran larva in the fossil record. Tadpoles of this species reached lengths of 15.9 centimetres (6.3 in), among the largest recorded in frogs living or extinct.
The skull of Triadobatrachus is frog-like, being broad with large eye sockets, but the fossil has features diverging from modern frogs. These include a longer body with more vertebrae. The tail has separate vertebrae, unlike the fused urostyle or coccyx found in modern frogs.
The fossil was first uncovered in 1984 by the late Nicholas Hotton III, a museum paleontologist who had excavated fossils from the Red Beds in Texas, an area known to be rich in Permian-age remains.
A 1.4-million-year-old fossil jaw discovered in a South African cave in 1949 has now been identified as that of a previously unknown human relative species dubbed the “nutcracker man”.
The oldest fossil "proto-frog" Triadobatrachus is known from the Early Triassic of Madagascar (250 million years ago), but molecular clock dating suggests their split from other amphibians may extend further back to the Permian, 265 million years ago.
'Human Biology and Behaviour: An anthropological perspective (4th ed.). Boston: Little Brown. ISBN 978-0-673-39013-4. (Note: this book contains very accessible descriptions of human and non-human primates, their evolution, and fossil history). Wells, Spencer (2004). The Journey of Man : A Genetic Odyssey. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks.