How frogs survived apocalypse
FROGS leapt to take advantage of the global catastrophe that killed off the dinosaurs, scientists have discovered.
New research shows that 88 per cent of frog species alive today owe their existence to the meteor impact that wiped the planet clean of most terrestrial life 66 million years ago.
Nearly nine out of 10 of the amphibian species are descended from just three lineages that survived the mass extinction.
Each of them jumped forward precisely at the junction of the Cretaceous and Paleogene periods – formerly known as the KT boundary – when the disaster happened.
The first survivors may have ridden out the meteor strike by burrowing underground, the scientists believe. Thereafter, it was arboreal tree frogs that led the way by exploiting newly available habitat niches.
Previous research had suggested that frog evolution took off 35 million years earlier and had nothing to do with the dinosaur apocalypse. American and Chinese scientists made the discovery after analysing genetic data from frogs within 44 living families.