{"id":3234,"date":"2008-02-20T15:52:14","date_gmt":"2008-02-20T19:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/2008\/02\/20\/beelzebufo-the-demon-frog\/"},"modified":"2008-02-20T15:52:15","modified_gmt":"2008-02-20T19:52:15","slug":"beelzebufo-the-demon-frog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/2008\/02\/20\/beelzebufo-the-demon-frog\/","title":{"rendered":"Beelzebufo, the Demon Frog"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

A team of researchers, led by Stony Brook University paleontologist David Krause, has discovered the remains in Madagascar of what may be the largest frog ever to exist. <\/p>\n

The 16-inch, 10-pound ancient frog, scientifically named Beelzebufo, or devil frog, links a group of frogs that lived 65 to 70 million years ago with frogs living today in South America. <\/p>\n

Discovery of the voracious predatory fossil frog — reported on-line this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) — is significant in that it may provide direct evidence of a one-time land connection between Madagascar, the largest island off Africa’s southeast coast, and South America.<\/p>\n

“Beelzebufo appears to be a very close relative of a group of South
\nAmerican frogs known as ‘ceratophyrines,’ or ‘pac-man’ frogs, because
\nof their immense mouths,” said Krause, whose research was funded by the
\nNational Science Foundation (NSF). The ceratophryines are known to
\ncamouflage themselves in their surroundings, then ambush predators.<\/p>\n

from Eureka Alert<\/a><\/p>\n

Good thing these babies are extinct! As anyone who has ever been attacked by “Pac-Man” frogs knows, those things can eat their way through a cloud of skeeters in about two shakes, and they are tiny!  Imagining what a ten pounder could do is enough to keep us awake at night.<\/i> <\/p>\n

Powered by ScribeFire<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A team of researchers, led by Stony Brook University paleontologist David Krause, has discovered the remains in Madagascar of what may be the largest frog ever to exist. The 16-inch, 10-pound ancient frog, scientifically named Beelzebufo, or devil frog, links … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1118,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1445],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weird-science"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1118"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3234\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}