Public Radio For Eastern North Carolina 89.3 WTEB New Bern 88.5 WZNB New Bern 91.5 WBJD Atlantic Beach 90.3 WKNS Kinston 88.5 WHYC Swan Quarter 89.9 W210CF Greenville
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Hundreds of ancient frogs died in this swamp mating death trap, researchers say

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

It's a case that went cold some 45 million years ago. What killed a couple hundred ancient frogs? NPR's Ari Daniel brings us a mystery that at long last may have been solved.

ARI DANIEL, BYLINE: Central Germany was once a coastal, subtropical swamp.

DANIEL FALK: With loads of creatures, loads of beasts running around.

DANIEL: Including - says Daniel Falk, a paleontology Ph.D. student at University College Cork - ancestral horses, giant crocodiles, huge snakes and plenty of frogs and toads. But in the modern era, things look rather different.

FALK: It's kind of like a fossil crime scene.

DANIEL: The swamp had preserved a couple hundred fossilized frogs and toads.

FALK: And the mysterious question is, like, why did all those animals die? Like, why did those frogs die?

DANIEL: For a long time, scientists thought the swamp had dried out, which could have killed the frogs. But Falk wasn't so sure.

FALK: I basically counted every single bone in every specimen.

DANIEL: The bones were in good shape, so the animals were healthy; there was even fossilized poop in a couple of them, so they didn't starve; and there weren't any predator marks, so the frogs and toads weren't eaten - process of elimination. And what was left, based on similar fossil deposits elsewhere and knowing about modern-day frogs, was that - and here's where it gets a bit gruesome - the ancient animals drowned while mating, especially the females.

FALK: And they sink down in the water. And if the females can't make it up to the surface at some stage, they unfortunately drown.

DANIEL: It's a theory Falk and his colleagues describe in a study published today in the journal "Papers in Palaeontology." If they're right, then it's not the males who revealed what happened; they're long gone. It's the females that have been preserved, whispering their story to us millions of years later. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Ari Daniel is a reporter for NPR's Science desk where he covers global health and development.