Oldest rainforest frogs found, according to BBC news, National Geographic News, and ScienceDaily, 14 June 2018 and Scientific Reports Scientific Reports, 14 June 2018, doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-26848-w.
Scientists from University of Florida and China University of Geosciences in Beijing have found the remains of four tiny frogs embedded in specimens of amber originally collected in Burma. None of the specimens includes a complete frog but one is complete enough to be identified as a new species and has been named Electrorana limoae. The new frogs have similar features to living frogs, and also to some other fossil frogs believed to now be extinct.
The amber is dated as 99 million years old, so the scientists claim the frogs are “the earliest direct evidence of frogs in wet tropical forests” and the oldest dated frogs in amber. They are not the oldest dated of all fossil frogs. According to David Blackburn of the University of Florida, “Frogs have been around on earth for approximately 200 million years.”
However, the scientists are puzzled as they try to fit the frogs into an evolutionary tree as the new fossils have similar features to fire-bellied toads and midwife toads, which now live in temperate, not tropical, ecosystems.
The researchers were able to study the frogs’ skeletons by using CT scans. David Blackburn is aiming to gather CT scan data from living and fossil frogs which “could help illuminate ancient evolutionary relationships, possibly clarifying how Electrorana fits into the frog tree of life”.
BBC, National Geographic, ScienceDaily
Editorial Comment: If these scientists are able to study CT scans of living and fossil frogs they won’t be finding any ancient evolutionary relationships. Those exist only in the minds of evolutionists, and are imposed on the data. The actual evidence shows that living and fossil frogs show no sign of having been anything else, nor to be changing into anything else.
All the evidence consists of clearly identifiable frogs. Even those fossil frogs dated as 200 million years old are fully formed frogs, as are these new fossil frogs. If these long ages really existed, that would mean frogs stayed frogs for 101 million years before these amber fossils formed, and then frogs stayed frogs for 99 more million years. No evolution has been observed.
A better explanation for the actual evidence from fossil frogs is that frogs were created as fully functional frogs, according to the kinds, and have multiplied after their kind ever since, and we see them still doing it in the living world.
Image of amber from Lida Xing, et. al. The earliest direct evidence of frogs in wet tropical forests from Cretaceous Burmese amber. Scientific Reports, 2018; 8 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-26848-w. Reproduced under Creative Commons license CC BY 4.0
Evidence News vol. 18 No. 7
3 July 2018
Creation Research Australia
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