A frog species whose ancestors evolved in the shadow of dinosaurs has been discovered burrowing into the remote mountains of southern India, a pair of biologists report in the October 16 issue of Nature.
The blackish-purple living fossil looks like a bloated doughnut with stubby legs and a pointy snout. Its closest relatives hang out in the Seychelles, a group of islands 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers) away.
"We had no idea it would be the closest relative of these Seychelles frogs," said Franky Bossuyt, a biologist at Free University of Brussels in Belgium, who described the species with his colleague S. D. Biju.
Biju and Bossuyt named the new species Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis and say it is so unique that it warrants the establishment of a new frog family, Nasikabatrachidae, of which it is the only member.
The relationship of Nasikabatrachus with the Sooglossidae in the Seychelles suggests that these frogs evolved about 130 million years ago before an ancient landmass known as Gondwana broke apart, sending India on a collision course with Asia and splitting the Seychelles adrift in the Indian Ocean.
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Full Version: Frog Discovery Is "Once in a Century"
Once again, i think you should be a UM news poster 
Me too, where do you get all the news from!? 
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