The invention of Litoria tylerantiqua means that Australian treefrogs (pelodryadids) have been current in Australia by the Early Eocene, when the continent was nonetheless related to Antarctica and South America because the final remnants of the supercontinent Gondwana.
An artist’s reconstruction of Litoria tylerantiqua (proper) and the previously-described species Platyplectrum casca (left) from Murgon, south-eastern Queensland. Picture: Samantha Yabsley, https://www.instagram.com/s.h.y_art.
Litoria tylerantiqua lived in Australia throughout the Early Eocene epoch, roughly 55 million years in the past.
The frog’s fossil bones have been collected within the Nineteen Nineties by College of New South Wales paleontologists by screen-washing clay samples from the Tingamarra fossil frog deposit in Murgon, Queensland.
“Round 55 million years in the past, Australia, Antarctica and South America have been linked collectively because the final remnants of Gondwana,” mentioned Dr. Roy Farman, a researcher on the College of New South Wales and the Australian Nationwide College, and colleagues.
“International climates have been hotter throughout this era, whereas a forested hall linked South America and Australia.”
“Up till now, it was thought the earliest Australian tree frogs got here from the Late Oligocene (about 26 million years in the past) and the Early Miocene (23 million years in the past).”
“Fossils of the Late Oligocene have been discovered at Kangaroo Nicely within the Northern Territory and Etadunna Formation at Lake Palankarinna, South Australia, whereas the Riversleigh World Heritage Space in Queensland revealed tree frogs from the Early Miocene.”
“However the brand new species extends the fossil report of pelodryadids by roughly 30 million years, to a time doubtlessly near the divergence of Australian tree frogs from the South American tree frogs,” they mentioned.
“Earlier estimates based mostly on molecular clock research instructed that Australian and South American tree frogs separated from one another at about 33 million years in the past.”
Litoria tylerantiqua joins the one different Murgon frog, the ground-dwelling Platyplectrum casca (beforehand described as Lechriodus casca), because the oldest frogs identified from Australia.
Each have dwelling family members in Australia and New Guinea demonstrating outstanding resilience over time.
“Regardless of their delicate nature, frogs have been surprisingly profitable at surviving a number of mass extinction occasions since their origins about 250 million years in the past, together with the mass extinction 66 million years in the past that took out the non-flying dinosaurs,” Dr. Farman mentioned.
“Though world extinction occasions triggered by human actions — similar to fast local weather change and the unfold of chytrid fungus — could also be among the many worst challenges frogs have needed to face, the fossil report may reveal how some frog teams overcame earlier challenges, maybe by adapting to new, less-threatening habitats.”
“This might present clues about how we would have the ability to assist by translocating some threatened frogs into extra future-secure habitats.”
“Frogs such because the southern corroboree frog (Pseudophryne corroboree) are threatened of their present habitats which have turn into extra hostile resulting from local weather change.”
“If the fossil report reveals bodily comparable frogs dwelling in very totally different habitats, in the present day’s frogs could profit by being reintroduced into comparable environments.”
The invention is described in a paper within the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
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Roy M. Farman et al. Early Eocene pelodryadid from the Tingamarra Native Fauna, Murgon, southeastern Queensland, Australia, and a brand new fossil calibration for molecular phylogenies of frogs. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, revealed on-line Could 14, 2025; doi: 10.1080/02724634.2025.2477815
