I read this in Yahoo! News :
By Will Dunham Mon Feb 18, 5:03 PM
ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It was the biggest, baddest, meanest
froggy ever to have hopped on Earth.
Scientists on Monday announced the discovery in northwestern Madagascar of a bulky amphibian dubbed
the "devil frog" that lived
65 million to 70 million years ago and was so nasty it may have
eaten newborn dinosaurs.
This brute was larger than any frog living today and may be the
biggest frog ever to have existed, according to paleontologist
David Krause of Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, New York, one of the scientists who found
the remains.
Its name, Beelzebufo ampinga, came from Beelzebub, the Greek for
devil, and bufo -- Latin for toad. Ampinga means "shield," named
for an armor-like part of its anatomy.
Beelzebufo (pronounced bee-el-zeh-BOOF-oh) was 16 incheslong and
weighed an estimated 10 pounds (4.5 kg).
It was powerfully built and possessed a very wide mouth and
powerful jaws. It probably didn't dine daintily.
"It's not outside the
realm of possibility that Beelzebufo took down lizards and mammals
and smaller frogs, and even -- considering its size -- possibly
hatchling dinosaurs," Krause said in a telephone
interview.
"It would have been quite mean," added paleontologist Susan
Evans of University College London,
another of the scientists.
Their findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences.
Even though it lived far away, Beelzebufo appears to be closely
related to a group of
frogs that live today in South America, the scientists said.
They are nicknamed "Pac-Man" frogs due to their huge mouths. Some
have little horns on their heads, and the scientists think Beelzebufo also may have had
horns -- a fitting touch for the "devil frog."
Beelzebufo was bigger than
any of its South American kin or any other living frog -- "as if it
was on steroids," Krause said. The largest one
today is the goliath
frog of West Africa, up to 12.5 inches long and 7.2 pounds
(3.3 kg).
The presence of Beelzebufo in Madagascar and its modern relatives in South America is
the latest sign a long-lost land bridge once may have linked
Madagascar to Antarctica
-- much warmer then -- and South America, the scientists said.
That would have let animals move overland among those land
masses. Fossils have been found of other animals in Madagascar from
Beelzebufo's time similar to South American ones.
KING OF FROGS
The first frogs appeared about 180 million years ago, and their
basic body plan has remained unchanged. Beelzebufo lived during the
Cretaceous Period at the end of the age of dinosaurs, which went
extinct along with many other types of animals 65 million years ago
when a huge space rock clobbered Earth.
Beelzebufo did not live an aquatic lifestyle, hopping among lily
pads, the scientists said. Instead, it lived in a semi-arid
environment and may have hunted like its modern-day relatives,
which camouflage themselves and jump out at prey.
Its first fragmentary fossils were found in 1993, and the
scientists have since assembled enough fragments to piece its
remains together like a jigsaw puzzle, Krause said.
While it was the king of frogs, Beelzebufo is not the largest
amphibian ever to have lived. Many reached truly astounding
dimensions, such as the crocodile-like Prionosuchus that grew to an
estimated 30 feet during the Permian Period, which ended about 250
million years ago.
(Editing by Peter Cooney)
