Wide-mouthed frogs, large enough to devour a dinosaur. This is not the beginning of a joke but the hypothesis of a new study that the ancestors of the Pac-Man frogs millions of years ago may have been able to tear apart small dinosaurs and crocodiles.
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him
wounds from mouth long, so large that it can devour a dinosaur. It is not the beginning of a joke but what is hypothesized by a new study according to which the antenatal delle rane Pac-Man millions of years ago they may have been able to tear apart small dinosaurs and crocodiles.
Despite their cute nickname due to the opening and shape of their mouth, the real name of this animal is rana horned and it is part of the genre Ceratophrys. Today these amphibians live in South America but their now extinct ancestors, the frogs diavolo, have caused a sensation for their ability to swallow i dinosaurs.
Let's take a trip back in time and go back to the late Cretaceous. About 68 million years ago, the devil frog (Beelzebufo ampinga) lived undisturbed in today's Madagascar. It was an amphibian of the order of the anurans, to which also frogs and toads belong.
When comparing the bite and mouth of the Pac-Man frogs to that of the devil frog ancestors, the researchers noted numerous similarities. But not only. The force of the Beelzebufo frog's bite could have allowed the animal to eat young dinosaurs.
Most frogs have relatively weak jaws and feed on small prey that they trap mostly through their sticky tongues but Pac-Man frogs (Ceratophrys) have an exceptionally powerful bite that allows them to devour creatures of their own size.
Once the researchers calculated the bite force of Pac-Man frogs (8 to 18 cm long) by relating it to head and body size, they made a comparison with extinct frogs, whose size was decidedly larger, about 41 cm long and with a head about 15 wide.
The study's calculations predicted that at that size, the bite of the devil frog would have been mighty like that of a wolf or a lion. This would certainly have made it possible to kill small crocodiles or dinosaurs especially if the hunting habits were similar to those of the aggressive and tenacious Pac-Man frogs.
"Horned frogs have an impressive bite and tend not to let go of anything", has explained lead author of the study, A. Kristopher Lappin, professor of biological sciences at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona.
READ also:
- THE RAIN FROG RUNS THE WEB WITH ITS VERSE (VIDEO)
- FROGS RISK MASS EXTINCTION: THE SHOCK STUDY
The study was published in Nature Scientific Reports.
Francesca Mancuso
