Posted:
October 17, 2003

The frog's thick, strong hind legs help it kick up sand so that it can burrow underground. Image courtsey S.D. Biju/Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute, India.

A new species of frog has been discovered in India. The amphibian is plump, purple, and its ancestors probably lived among dinosaurs 175 million years ago, according to DNA analyses.

Two scientists, S.D. Biju of India, and Franky Bossuyt of Belgium, found the frog in the Western Ghats Mountains of Southern India. The new species, named Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis, belongs to an entirely new family of frogs.

The frog's closest relatives live 1,800 miles away on the islands of Seychelles, near Madagascar. So how did the species travel from Africa to India?

Not by hopping, say the researchers, but by continental drift. They speculate that when India broke apart from Africa and crashed into Asia millions of years ago, the frog rode India like a ferry.

The researchers found genetic markers in the new species suggesting a link between frogs in India and Seychelles.

“It's amazing that this frog has turned up now,” says S. Blair Hedges of Pennsylvania State University in University Park, who wrote an accompanying commentary to the study published in Nature.

Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis is not likely to win any beauty contests. It has a bloated body with smooth, blackish purple skin. The frog's pointed snout and heavy, strong hind legs help it burrow into sand.

It's not everyday that scientists discover a previously unknown species of frog. In fact it's been over 70 years since anyone found a new frog species; most of the 29 families of frogs had been named by the mid-1800s.

So far, only one example of this new species, a female, has been found and it is not yet clear if anymore exist.

Possible Indian odysseys: three models of the position of Africa 65 million years ago. a, India separated by large expanse of water b, limited land bridge between Africa and India c, connections between Africa, India, Asia and Madagascar. Image courtsey Nature.

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Biju, S. D. and Franky Bossuyt. New frog family from India reveals an ancient biogeographical link with the Seychelles. Nature 425, 711-713 ( October 16, 2003 ).

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