This frog is a living fossil. It seems it might have split up from other frogs about 150 million years ago and has not changed much since. It is Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis, the prehistoric purple frog (sometimes called the pignose frog), a “squat, grumpy blob”, discovered in India in 2003. There are no close relatives for this frog, which apparently feels like a big bag of jelly when you hold it in your hand.
The frog spends 50 weeks a year burrowed underground, which explains why scientists have never seen it before. Biologists have described N. sahyadrensis as “a living fossil” because it resembles (in some ways) some of the earliest frogs like few other living species.
It is the closest living relative of the Sooglossidae, which live in the Seychelles. N. sahyadrensis split from that family 130 million years ago, and went along its own evolutionary path, resulting in the bizarre little amphibian that we see here.
Pictures by Naturalist and wildlife photographer Kalyan Varma.
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