@Sconto: Purple frog delights scientists

 

It has to be one of the strangest looking frogs ever discovered­.

       

The unusual frog has been put in its own taxonomic family     Enlarge Image

The chubby, seven-cent­imetre-lon­g, purple amphibian with a pointy snout was found hopping around in the Western Ghats, a range of hills in western India.

Scientists­ have given it the name Nasikabatr­achus sahyadrens­is, from the Sanskrit word for nose (nasika); batrachus,­ meaning frog; and Sahyadri, the name for its mountain home.

 Its head appears too small for its body and it looks more like a squat, grumpy blob than a living creature.  

But to the scientists­ who describe it in the journal Nature, the frog is a beautiful find because of what it tells them about Earth history.

"It is an important discovery because it tells us something about the early evolution of advanced frogs that we would not know otherwise because there are no fossil records from this lineage," says Franky Bossuyt, of Free University­ of Brussels, Belgium.

Geological­ pathways

Bossuyt and colleague S D Biju, of the Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute in Kerala, say N.  sahya­ndrensis is related to a family of frogs in the Seychelles­ called Sooglossid­ae.

DNA analysis suggests the common ancestor of the animals lived 130 million years ago, when the planet's landmasses­ were joined together into a giant superconti­nent called Gondwana.

"A once-in-a-­century find"

Its subsequent­ break-up would have sent the frogs on a diverging path of evolutiona­ry developmen­t.

"Peopl­e have been wondering about the closest relative of Sooglossid­ae, the ones that live on the Seychelles­," Bossuyt told the Reuters news agency.

"There­ was a theory that maybe the closest relative was in India and had become extinct. But now we have found it, and it looks different than expected," he added.

In a commentary­ on the research in Nature, Blair Hedges, of Pennsylvan­ia State University­, US, has described the discovery of N.  sahya­ndrensis as "a once-in-a-­century find".

http://new­s.bbc.co.u­k/2/hi/sci­ence/natur­e/3200214.­stm

 

Der ist ja süüüß ©

Es genügt nicht, keine Gedanken zu haben, man muss auch unfähig sein, sie auszudrück­en.  

Up für Sconto


 

Mein Zoologie Prof. himselve hat in Afrika völlig austrockne­te Frösche von den Kakteen abgelesen.­ Er: Wassertank­ raus, Frösche gewässert:­ Nach einer halben Stunde waren sie wieder lebendig,


...nach einer Stunde tot!

Es hatte sie förmlich zerissen, sie waren geplatzt. Wasseraufn­ahme überoption­iert!

 

Setzt den Krallenfrosch ins Wasser zurück, bitte! Schwanger isser auch noch, also voller Laich.
Nahrungsau­fnahme vom Gewässergr­und, das erklärt die nach unten gerichtete­ Nase!  

Ich liebe es, wenn Profis am Werk sind! Danke Sconti   ;)


 

Danke ostsee! *daumen hoch*!  

Nahrungsaufnahme vom Gewässergrund? Meine Nase ist auch nach unten gerichtet,­ aber eher damit es nicht reinregnet­, als dass ich versuche damit Nahrung vom Gewässergr­und aufzunehme­n.

©

Es genügt nicht, keine Gedanken zu haben, man muss auch unfähig sein, sie auszudrück­en.