Tuesday, February 19, 2008

The best genus name ever

Paleontologists have unearthed a Cretaceous fossil frog from Madagascar that was twice the size of the largest living frog. What did they name it? Beelzebufo. Devil-toad. Kudos to those paleontologists for having the balls to get such a ridiculous name published - I'm still laughing! Unfortunately, the artist's illustration seems to have simply scaled up a modern-day Ceratophrys, the Beelzebufo's most similar modern equivalent.

Update: Pharyngula weighs in with some more info from the actual publication (which I couldn't find on PNAS, guess I didn't look hard enough).

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