This week scientists announced that they had discovered some pretty unusual frogs hidden away in Myanmar. It seems these four unlucky frogs were hopping around in a forest during the Cretaceous period when they became trapped in tree sap. Over the course of millions of years (99 million to be exact) the sap turned to amber, preserving the frogs inside it. Thanks to technology, scientists were able to perform a CT scan on the amber and, although very little remained of the frogs’ skeletons, they also found worms, spiders, and bamboo trapped within the amber. All of these discoveries suggest that these 99 million-year-old frogs lived in a tropical environment just like many species do today. Until now the fossil record contained very few frogs, and the ones that have been found offer little to no information on the environment these amphibians lived in. Thanks to a few sticky globs of tree sap, we now have a clearer picture of what the earth looked like millions of years ago, and what the lives of these adorable little frogs was like.

Want to learn more? Visit https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-26848-w

June 18, 2018