Image courtesy of Mariana Chuliver et al., Journal (2024)
Joel Kontinen
Millions of years
and evolution go together but a tadpole fossils says they haven’t changed a lot, during those years.
An exquisitely
preserved fossilised tadpole is the oldest ever discovered by science, dating
back 161 million years, with an anatomy that is strikingly similar to some of
today’s species.
“They did not achieve their goal,” says Mariana
Chuliver at Maimonides University in Buenos Aires, Argentina. “However, after
many days of digging, one team member found a stone with a particular imprint
on it – a fossil tadpole.”
Chuliver and her colleagues have now identified the
tadpole as belonging to the extinct frog species Notobatrachus degiustoi,
deciphered from the hundreds of adult specimens found in the same fossil
deposit since 1957.
Until now, scientists had never unearthed
tadpole fossils from
before the Cretaceous Period, which began around 145 million years ago. This
specimen is also the first ever fossilised tadpole from an earlier frog lineage
known as stem anurans, which predates modern species, known as crown anurans.
Source:
James Woodford 2024 Oldest tadpole fossil known to science dates back 161 million years | New Scientist 30 October.
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