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Science

New Living Fossil Discovered in India 83

Posted by michael from the fugly dept.
pyr0 writes "A new species of frog has been discovered in Southern India. This species dates back 130 million years ago, when portions of the supercontinent Gondwana broke away, and was long thought to have been extinct. Its closest relatives are known as 'Sooglossids' and are only found 3000km away on Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. The cool thing about this species? It's purple, and has what looks like a snout!"
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New Living Fossil Discovered in India More

New Living Fossil Discovered in India

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  • Clearly, God put it there to test our faith.
  • Wow, when they said a little purple frog with a tiny head and snout, they where NOT kidding. Funny looking little frog.

    Now I'm wondering what kind of Croak it makes.

    And they tested its DNA, and said it was a different breed of frogs, amazing.
  • it kinda looks like a purple mole, I want one as a pet.

  • I Feal Froggy (Score:4, Funny)

    by lostindenver ( 53192 ) on Thursday October 16, 2003 @01:43PM (#7231855)
    I Feal Froggy, If i lick it will i see purple frogs?

  • Hmmmm (Score:2, Insightful)

    by floydman ( 179924 )
    New Living Fossil Discovered in India!!

    Praying Doesn't Help!!!

    Very intersting /. day today.... i cant wait to know what else is comming up.

    • New Living Fossil Discovered in India!!

      Praying Doesn't Help!!!

      Very intersting /. day today.... i cant wait to know what else is comming up.

      Arnold elected governor of California!

      Windows vulnerabilities fixed faster!

      Rush does dope!

      US taxpayers pay $1.75 to support each gallon of gasoline sold in Iraq!

      It seems we've all been teleported to Bizarro World. I want to see the results of a study about praying to purple frogs...

  • Another Link (Score:3, Informative)

    by pyr0 ( 120990 ) on Thursday October 16, 2003 @02:06PM (#7232085)
    I came across another link [discovery.com] since submitting the story. This one actually gives the name of this new species: Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis
  • But does it run linux?
  • licking it give you hella buzz?
  • else they would have declared it was deformed because of pollution and started sueing the crap out of everybody.

    BC
  • If a 130 million year old species of frog is so darn purple... wonder what other colors were around back then. Maybe a purple dinosaur isn't so far off. We always assume they were greenish. Hmmmm..

    It would be interesting if they could find a 'purple' gene in that frog, and then look for the same gene elsewhere.. see what else might have been purple.
    • Small problem, most fossils are old enough that there is simply no DNA left to extract and test. Finding DNA in a 2,000 year old body is extraordinarily hard, let alone after millions of years.

    • Maybe it WAS greenish 130 millions years ago and it only "recently" turned purple.
  • "Researchers say the small-headed critter belongs to a new family of frogs thought to have disappeared millions of years ago."

    That sentence cracks me up. It's so new it disappeared millions of years ago! I know what they meant, but still...
  • Purple frogs? Sounds like a character from a Dr Suess book to me.
  • its moch frog.
  • so they're trying to tell me that this frog has been pretty much the same for all these millions of years, and meanwhile the earth has undergone all sorts of climate changes and most other species have radically evolved.

    is it just me or do things like this make old-earth, macro-evolution theories harder to swallow? of course, i'm not sure how much an ugly purple thing like that helps out the intelligent-design theorists either. when are people gonna start to admit that we just really don't know much abou
    • Well, evolution is stochastic, and there is a probability that a species in its original condition will not need to respond to changes in the environment and can still survive. The fact that it occurs so infrequently (so few species of living fossils), helps out the theory. It helps to admit that we don't know, only if that leads to an open mind in looking for the solution. Otherwise, we should just stick with the best theory we have till someone comes up with one that is better. And evolution does have an
      • good point about the rarity of these "living fossils."

        though i'm not so sure how i feel about "sticking with the best theory..." i suppose it depends on what you mean by that, but i got pretty fed up with the evolutionary dogma shoved down my throat in the public school system when i was growing up. so many things presented to me were obviously based on the assumptions of philosophical materialism (read: atheism). but worst of all, there was never another theory presented. i think that's poor policy.
        • There is no competing scientific theory.

          If you're talking some religious bullshit, then where is your evidence for it? (There isn't any.)

          Talking about 'strongest theory in the mix' is rather dishonest when the 'strength' of your favoured "theory" is nonexistent. Do you even know the definition of the word theory in science?
          • ever heard of Michael Behe? how about William Dembski? look 'em up before you start blabbing on about there being no scientific contention with traditional evolutionary theory. ...but then again, you seem like you've made up your mind and can't take any opposition. so never mind about doing the research, go live in your happy little world and don't bother questioning the reality you've been taught.
            • Yes, I have heard of them, but a couple of cranks who write books doesn't make a scientific theory.

              What research have they done? Where can I find their papers? How many biologists support their position?

              Yes, I have made up my mind. 150 years of finding evidence and doing research is a fairly serious questioning of reality IMO. The fact is that this mountain of evidence and research points to evolution.

              *You* are kidding yourself if you think you're being open minded by accepting the creationist dogma. You
              • so you've heard those names, that's nice. can you tell me what they do for a living? have you read anything by them (either their books or papers)? do you typically write off people that challenge your beliefs as cranks when you know next to nothing about them?

                oh, and congrats on the 150 years of successful research. you must be tired after all that. and even if i misunderstood and other people did all of that, your study and grasp of all that material is also worthy of congratulations!

                seriously, don
                • Yes, I have read some of what they are passing off as science, and I can tell why they are wrong. You are just assuming that I know nothing about them or their views.

                  Yes, of course I was referring to the peer reviewed work done by thousands of scientists since Darwin published the Origin of Species.

                  This is not an argument from authority, I am not saying Darwin or Gould said such and such which agrees with my position. I'm saying that there is a mountain of evidence supporting evolution, and no evidence at
            • I've read articles by Behe and Dembski and was not favorably impressed. Behe and Dembski are not taken seriously by the scientific community for that matter either. For example, read Nature's review of Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" (Nature 1996, Volume 383, pages 227-228, available pay-only from them, but freely available here [world-of-dawkins.com]). Another review that is available [ncseweb.org] online is from the National Center for Science Education--the premier science education body in the USA. Naturally, both it and Nature (and, wel
    • I don't know what the linked-to story says, but the authors of the Nature paper says nothing like that. What they found was the when reconstructing an evolutionary tree based on molecular data, the new species had a lineages distinct from most other frogs and that its closest living relative is found on the Seychelles.

    • so they're trying to tell me that this frog has been pretty much the same for all these millions of years, and meanwhile the earth has undergone all sorts of climate changes and most other species have radically evolved. is it just me or do things like this make old-earth, macro-evolution theories harder to swallow?

      It's just you, because you don't seem to understand evolution.

      First: species don't evolve much. If a group of organisms belong to a species changes a great deal, they're not the same specie

  • Just in time for Halloween. "Night of the living fossils"
  • If this frog has seen the continents split, dinosaurs come and go, the rise of the mammals and the evolution of mankind, are we really so arrogant to think that *we* have discovered *it*? I think that the frogs have deemed it time to contact their childish co-planetiods and impart their age-old wisdom to us. It is clear they are intellectually our superior as they have finally given up their game of hide and seek the clear victors. I find it a disgrace that my fellow /.ers are wanting them as pets and gener
  • With so many confused comments in this thread, I think it is appropriate to link to the actual Nature paper [nature.com]. I think this abstract page is readable by everyone, sorry if you need a subscription. In that case, I offer the abstract

    About 96% of the more than 4,800 living anuran species belong to the Neobatrachia or advanced frogs. Because of the extremely poor representation of these animals in the Mesozoic fossil record, hypotheses on their early evolution have to rely largely on extant taxa. Here we report

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