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Biogeography

The coelacanth of frogs

Nature volume 425, pages 669–670 (2003)Cite this article

A frog that lives in the mountains of southern India is a rare breed indeed: it is a new species that merits the establishment of a new family. Moreover, this is a discovery with considerable biogeographical significance.

Just how significant is the discovery of another family of frogs? Only 29 families are known, encompassing the approximately 4,800 known species3. Most of these families were named by the mid-1800s, and the last discovery of a species of frog belonging to a new family, as opposed to merely a taxonomic rearrangement, was in 1926 (ref. 3). All others date to the 1700s and 1800s, making this a once-in-a-century find. Moreover, according to fossils and evolutionary 'clocks' devised using molecular data, families of frogs are about as ancient as orders and superorders of mammals, having diverged from one another during the heyday of the dinosaurs in the Mesozoic era (251–65 million years ago)2,4.

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Figure 1

S. D. BIJU

Figure 2: Possible Indian odysseys: different models for the position of India approximately 65 million years ago.

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  1. NASA Astrobiology Institute and Department of Biology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, 16802, Pennsylvania, USA

    S. Blair Hedges

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  1. S. Blair Hedges
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Hedges, S. The coelacanth of frogs. Nature 425, 669–670 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/425669a

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