99 Million Years ago a Frog and a Beetle sat Down for Lunch

Sadly for them they sat in tree sap which put an end to lunch but luckily for us 99 million years later we can see the result of the encounter between a now extinct species of frog and an unknown beetle trapped in their small time capsule.

“It’s almost unheard of to get a fossil frog from this time period that is small, has preservation of small bones and is mostly three-dimensional. This is pretty special,” said David Blackburn, study co-author and the associate curator of herpetology at the Florida Museum of Natural History. “But what’s most exciting about this animal is its context. These frogs were part of a tropical ecosystem that, in some ways, might not have been that different to what we find today – minus the dinosaurs.”
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu...

I really enjoy these threads of yours.

Amber encapsulation is so much more interesting to me than fossilization for obvious reasons.

99 million year old, long-extinct species just waiting to be discovered.

a reply to: gortex

I love frogs ... great find!

That totally 'rocks'

Worst date ever.

a reply to: gortex

Goodie. So when can I buy a pet dinosaur? I hear raptors make great pets. And they love children too (delicious).


Note: "Great" doesnt always mean 'good'.

When I was a kid a friend of my mother gave me an amber encased ant, I was told that it was prehistoric.

I think it's still in a box in my moms attic, this was 24 years ago though, when the first Jurassic park movie came out.

I remember a song from my childhood:

A frog went a-courtin' and he did ride, M-hm, M-hm.
A frog went a-courtin' and he did ride,
Sword and pistol by his side, M-hm, M-hm.

The song ends with the frog marrying a mouse and moving to France. Now I see that the frog actually married a beetle and got caught in a glob of Amber for 99 million years.

Who would have thought that political correctness is over 99 million years old. I thought it was a modern invention!


-dex

This is an example of what Kermits evolved from.