Living Fossil: Prehistoric Pignose Frog

Most people refer to this amphibian as the "Purple Frog," but it doesn't look very purple to me. It is also labelled as the Pignose Frog, so we'll go with that, for this post. Anyway, many folks conclude that this prehistoric frog is, in fact, a living fossil. It is another one of those strange creatures that throws a giant "WTF" to the evolutionists out there. The pignose frog is supposed to be split up from other frogs somewhere around 150 million years ago, and it has obviously not changed very much since! It was finally discovered to still be living in today's world, back in 2003 albeit the tadpole version was described in 1918, going by what I've read.

These ancient "purple frogs" spend 50 weeks per year buried underground, which only gives them about 2 weeks above the surface during any given year. Wow! No wonder these suckers have been hard to find! However, these weird-looking frogs are on the endangered species list. I don't really know how they can keep an accurate count of the pignose frogs, especially since they've been hiding from us for so long. Either way, I thought I'd share this prehistoric amphibian today, that supposedly comes from a family of frogs that were here during the dinosaur days; cheers!

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Source = en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_frog

---End of Post "Living Fossil: Prehistoric Pignose Frog"

Update: I'm about to provide an excerpt from Wikipedia that they added a few years after this post. It helps clear up some confusion about the history of this frog's discovery. I've already provided a link to this excerpt via the image credit. 

"The species was described from specimens collected in the Idukki district of Kerala by S.D. Biju from the Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute in Palode, India, and Franky Bossuyt from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Free University of Brussels), in 2003. However, it was already well known to the local people and several earlier documented specimens and publications had been ignored by the authors in the 2003 paper that describes the genus and species."

Well, in a thumbnail, I guess that means that in 2003 many folks acted like it was recently discovered, but all the locals in that area were like, "Duh! This pignose frog thingy has been hanging with us for a long time, bro!" Ha-ha! Anyway, I just thought I'd drop that tidbit off. I must say, though, it is interesting when researching living fossils - especially when you find out they haven't changed much, if at all, from prehistoric records and/or fossils, etc.  ---End of Update