Giant Prehistoric Frog Capable of Tackling Small Dinosaurs

Ever since it was formally named and described back in 2008, the beach-ball-sized Late Cretaceous frog Beelzebufo (Beelzebufo ampinga) has fascinated scientists.  The fossil record of frogs (Order Anura), is very poor, although these small, usually unobtrusive creatures have a long evolutionary history.  Imagine the surprise of palaeontologists when they discovered the fossilised remains of a 68 million-year-old monster frog in Upper Cretaceous deposits in Madagascar.

The Late Cretaceous Giant Frog Beelzebufo Compared to an Extant Bull Frog

Beelzebufo ampinga illustrated.

Picture credit: Associated Press

Beelzebufo ampinga

It had been speculated that this huge frog could have eaten small dinosaurs.  Writing in the scientific journal “Scientific Reports”, a team of researchers including scientists from the University of Adelaide have concluded that “the frog from hell” had a strong bite capable of tackling relatively large prey, including, potentially, reptiles, birds and mammals.  Small dinosaurs and juveniles of larger species of dinosaur could have been on Beelzebufo’s menu!

Scaling up the Bite Forces from South American Horned Frogs

The vast majority of the frogs and toads alive today have relatively weak jaws.  Most of these amphibians specialise in attacking prey much smaller than themselves such as insects and slugs.   However, one living group of frogs, the South American horned frogs (genus Ceratophrys), are an exception.  These large-mouthed frogs have voracious appetites and their comically big heads allow them to tackle much more substantial prey items.

By scaling up the bite force readings from these types of frogs, the researchers concluded that a frog the size of Beelzebufo could have had a bite force in excess of 2,200 newtons, that’s about twice as much force as a typical adult human can generate when the force of the bite from their molars is assessed.

Measuring the Bite Force of Ceratophrys

An individual Ceratophrys cranwelli biting a force transducer.

Picture credit: University of Adelaide

Most Frogs Have Weak Jaws

One of the paper’s authors, Dr Marc Jones (University of Adelaide) explained:

“Unlike the vast majority of frogs which have weak jaws and typically consume small prey, horned frogs ambush animals as large as themselves, including other frogs, snakes, and rodents.  Their powerful jaws play a critical role in grabbing and subduing the prey.”

The study found that small horned frogs, with a head width of about 4.5 centimetres, can bite with a force of 30 newtons (N) or about 3 kg of pressure.  When these readings were scaled up to take into account much larger extant species, such as the horned frogs from South America, the researchers concluded that for frogs with a head width of around 10 centimetres a bite force of almost 500 newtons could be generated.

Based on their scaling data, the scientists estimated the bite force of the giant extinct frog Beelzebufo may have been up to 2,200 N, comparable to formidable mammalian predators such as female tigers and wolves.

Dr Jones stated:

“At this bite force, Beelzebufo would have been capable of subduing the small and juvenile dinosaurs that shared its environment.”

Persuading Frogs to Bite onto a Custom-made Force Transducer

Corresponding author for the scientific paper, Professor Kristopher Lappin of the Biological Sciences Department, California State Polytechnic University, (California), outlined how the study was undertaken.

The scientists managed to persuade their amphibian subjects to bite down onto leather straps attached to a custom-made force transducer.  This device provided an accurate measurement of the amount of force being applied by the animal.

Professor Lappin said:

“This is the first time bite force has been measured in a frog and speaking from experience, horned frogs have quite an impressive bite and they tend not to let go.  The bite of a large Beelzebufo would have been remarkable, definitely not something I would want to experience.”

It seems those assumptions made by the original researchers back in 2008 were right, based on this evidence Beelzebufo would have been more than capable of snapping up a small dinosaur for dinner.

To read Everything Dinosaur’s 2008 article about the discovery of Beelzebufo and its implications for the radiation of frogs: Beelzebufo – The Frog from Hell.

Visit the Everything Dinosaur website: Everything Dinosaur.

Soft-bodied Dickinsonia – An Animal

The Late Proterozoic saw the evolution of a variety of bizarre, multi-cellular organisms, fossils of which, are extremely rare and what evidence we have, does little to shed light on where on the tree of life these organisms would sit.

Food chains existed but the organisms that made up the biota are so strange and so unlike anything alive today, it’s almost as if palaeontologists looking at Ediacaran fauna are studying life on another planet.  True, Earth back in the Ediacaran geological period (635 to 542 million years ago), was a very different place than it is now.  However, one group of scientists studying one type of Ediacaran organism – Dickinsonia, have confirmed previous studies that place this peculiar disc-shaped organism as definitely belonging to the Kingdom Animalia.

Dickinsonia, looks like nothing alive today, but it has been classified as metazoan, or possibly a placozoan – that puts it in the same Kingdom as you and me.

Dickinsonia – Classified as an Animal

Dickinsonia confirmed as an animal.

Picture credit: University of Oregon

What on Earth was Dickinsonia?

Living more than 550 million years ago, Dickinsonia fossils do not resemble any living organism.  It is round or oval in shape, segmented with a distinct “head” and “tail” end, but which was the front and which was the back is debated and whether the terms “head” and “tail” are applicable at all is disputed.  As far as we at Everything Dinosaur are aware, no evidence of a gut or other internal structures have been found.  These fossils, some of which are up to a metre in diameter have been described as early jellyfish, segmented worms, fungi and even an early form of lichen.

Hundreds of examples showing all stages of growth (ontogeny) and in various states of preservation have been found, most famously from the Ediacara Hills in South Australia, from which this geological period is named.

In 1946, geologist Reginald Spriggs discovered fossilised imprints in rocks in this area that represent a marine biota, an ancient sea floor.  This was the first known fossil record of multi-cellular life on Earth that predates the Cambrian.  This diverse and exquisitely preserved community of ancient organisms represents a significant snapshot of our planet’s geological heritage, but working out what these fossils represent and where they fit in with the evolution of Cambrian organisms (if they do fit in), is very much open to debate.

A New Scientific Study

In a new study, carried out by scientists at Bristol, Cambridge and Oxford universities in conjunction with the British Geological Survey, strong support is provided for the theory that Dickinsonia was an animal, that it has affinities with the Metazoa, specifically the Eumetazoa plus the Placozoa.  The research is published in the “Proceedings of the Royal Society B”.

Finding a Place in Biology for Dickinsonia

The Ediacaran fossil Dickinsonia costata, specimen P40135 from the collections of the South Australia Museum.

Picture credit: Dr Alex Liu (Cambridge University)

The Metazoa

The Metazoa are a very basal clade of the Kingdom Animalia.  They are animals that have three types of tissue layer in the embryo and are multi-cellular).  Metazoans are regarded as a sister group to the Porifora (Sponges).  The Placozoa are associated with the metazoans, they are represented by one living genus – Trichoplax and they are flattened, multi-cellular organisms that absorb nutrients through their surface area.

Dr Renee Hoekzema (Oxford University) and one of the authors of the research paper explained:

“Dickinsonia belongs to the Ediacaran biota, a collection of mostly soft-bodied organisms that lived in the global oceans between roughly 580 and 540 million years ago.  They are mysterious because despite there being around two hundred different species, very few of them resemble any living or extinct organism and therefore what they were, and how they relate to modern organisms, has been a long-standing palaeontological mystery.”

The team examined a large number of Dickinsonia fossils, of varying growth stages and applied a quantitative method for plotting the development of the organism, essentially how the animal grew and changed as it got bigger.  An assumption was made as to which fossils represented juveniles and which ones were adults and based on this, the researchers concluded that the growth body plan for Dickinsonia placed it within the Animalia.

This study was undertaken using the principle that growth and development are “conserved” within lineages.  To put it another way, the way a group of organisms grows today would not have changed significantly from the way its ancestors grew hundreds of millions of years ago.

Dickinsonia Composed of Multiple “Units”

Dickinsonia is composed of multiple “units” that run down the length of its body.  The researchers counted the number of these units in numerous specimens, measured their lengths and plotted these against the relative “age” of the unit, assuming growth from a particular end of the organism.

This data produced a plot with a series of curves, each of which tracked how the organism changed in the size and number of units with age, enabling the researchers to produce a computer model to replicate growth in the organism and test previous hypotheses about where and how growth occurred.

Dr Hoekzema added:

“We were able to confirm that Dickinsonia grows by both adding and inflating discrete units to its body along its central axis.  But we also recognised that there is a switch in the rate of unit addition versus inflation at a certain point in its life cycle.  All previous studies have assumed that it grew from the end where each “unit” is smallest, and was therefore considered to be youngest. We tested this assumption and interpreted our data with growth assumed from both ends, eventually coming to the conclusion that people have been interpreting Dickinsonia as having grown at the wrong end for the past seventy years.”

The First of the Ediacaran Biota to be Described

Dickinsonia was the first organism from the Ediacaran fossil material (Flinders Range), to be described (1947).  Using this computer model, the researchers were able to cross-reference data with studies into how this organism may have moved across the seabed and concluded that it was an early animal, belonging to either the Placozoa or the Eumetazoa.

An Illustration of Life in the Ediacaran Period

Life in the Ediacaran.

Picture credit: John Sibbick

Dr Hoekzema went onto state:

“This is one of the first times that a member of the Ediacaran biota has been identified as an animal on the basis of positive evidence.”

The methodology used in this study could be applied to other Ediacaran organisms, so long as there are sufficient fossils to comprise a significant data set.

Co-author Dr Liu stated:

“This finding demonstrates that animals were present among the Ediacaran biota and importantly confirms a number of recent findings that suggest animals had evolved several million years before the “Cambrian Explosion” that has been the focus of attention for studies into animal evolution for so long.  It also allows Dickinsonia to be considered in debates surrounding the evolution and development of key animal traits such as bilateral symmetry, segmentation and the development of body axes, which will ultimately improve our knowledge of how the earliest animals made the transition from simple forms to the diverse range of body plans we see today.”

Visit the Everything Dinosaur website: Everything Dinosaur.

Palaeontologist Mike Getty Dies Unexpectedly

Celebrated fossil hunter and chief fossil preparator at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Mike Getty, has died unexpectedly whilst working on a Triceratops excavation north of Denver (Colorado).

A Triceratops fossil, most probably a young adult, was discovered by chance as a construction crew was removing top soil as part of the initial groundworks prior to the building of a new fire and police station.

Mike was part of a field team from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science helping to excavate and jacket the fossil bones.  Much of the material had already been removed, but Mike and some colleagues were still working on the site Monday, when he was suddenly taken ill.

Mike Getty – Famous Palaeontologist Dies Suddenly at Dig Site

Renowned palaeontologist Mike Getty sadly passed away on Monday.

Picture credit: Denver Museum of Nature and Science

A Career Dedicated to the Earth Sciences and Education

Raised in western Canada, Mike discovered a fascination for palaeontology and dinosaurs as a child, his enthusiasm was fired as a result of frequent visits to the Badlands of Alberta.  He developed a keen interest in fossils and quickly earned a reputation for being able to detect and identify fossils in the field.  He attended the University of Calgary (Alberta) and went on to lead many field teams in the world-famous Dinosaur Park Formation, uncovering and helping to map several ceratopsian bonebeds.

Mike joined the Natural History Museum of Utah and took part in numerous excavations and helped prepare for research and public display a large number of fossil vertebrates.  He joined the Denver Museum of Nature and Science four years ago and his sudden death, at fifty years of age, has shocked and greatly saddened all his colleagues and co-workers.

Mike Getty Working at the Thornton Triceratops Excavation

Mike Getty working on a Triceratops excavation.

Picture credit: Denver Museum of Nature and Science

A Dedicated Scientist and Teacher

Described as a dedicated scientist with a quirky, fun-loving personality, Mike’s contribution to palaeontology was recognised in 2010 when the horned dinosaur Utahceratops (U. gettyi) was named in his honour, a reflection on his contribution to the study of dinosaur fossils found in southern Utah.

Utahceratops gettyi – The Species Name Honours Mike Getty

The Late Cretaceous ceratopsian Utahceratops gettyi was named in honour of Mike Getty.  Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Utahceratops gettyi Honours Palaeontologist

The species name honours Mike Getty of the Utah Museum of Natural History who has been prominent in the study of dinosaur fossils found in southern Utah.  One of Mike’s last public engagements was presenting to the media an update on the Thornton Triceratops excavation.  As a skilled preparator, he knew what was required in order to ensure the preservation of delicate fossil material and the dinosaur fossil record of the western United States and Canada would have been much poorer but for the efforts of Mike.

Dr Andrew Farke of the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Palaeontology (Claremont, California), who worked with Mike on the Utahceratops study commented:

“He was a character in every sense of the word.  He was quirky, he had a personality and he was one of those people… it’s really hard to imagine that he’s gone now.”

To read Everything Dinosaur’s article on the discovery of Utahceratops: The Curious Ceratopsians Just Got Even More Curious.

A spokesperson from Everything Dinosaur said:

“Our thoughts are with family and friends.  We have had the very great pleasure of being able to write about Mike’s numerous achievements in the field of palaeontology on this blog and he will be sadly missed.  We were due to write about the Thornton Triceratops excavation and the discovery of a broken tyrannosaur tooth amongst the horned dinosaur’s fossil bones.  It was thanks to Mike’s diligence and skill that small fragmentary fossils such as this tyrannosaur tooth could be preserved and studied, adding to our knowledge about the dinosaurs that once roamed western North America.”