Fossil of a dinosaur-era frog suggests it suffered gruesome death while mating

Scientists in their latest discovery have found a fossilised frogthat lived along with the dinosaurs nearly 100 million years ago. What's even more interesting is that this frog's belly is filled with eggs, indicating that it was in the process of mating when it died.

This is the oldest such frog to have been ever found by the scientists. The researchers suggested that the frog is likely to have been killed while mating, while the female is likely to have been drowned by a male which was gripping her.

The frogs do not get pregnant. The female frogs instead developa batch of eggs which are ready to lay in what is called a "gravid" state. Eventually, the eggs are laid and fertilised by a male.

In a study which was published in the journal Royal Society B: Biological Sciences on February 6, the researchers revealed that the gravid frog, which is from the species Gansubatrachus qilianensis, was discovered in a fossil bed present in northwest China and dates back to the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago).

The fossilised frogs, which belong to this period, are very scarce and those having preserved soft tissues are also rare.

The researchers noted that the specimen is more extraordinary still and is a gravid frog's earliest documented record.

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The frog was still skeletally immature

The fossilised gravid frog has been compared by scientists with other previously discovered specimens.

The scientists built a high-resolution model of its skeleton with the help of fossils' computed tomography (CT) scans and analysed the composition of its eggs with the use of X-rays.

As per the analysis of the scientists, the frog was still skeletally immature which meant she was able to sexually reproduce beforefully developing physically.

Although this is common in various modern animals, previously there was no direct fossil evidence that this was the case for toads and ancient frogs.

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Speaking to Live Science, a palaeontologist at Lanzhou University in China and lead author Baoxia Du said, "The evolution of reproduction, especially reproductive strategies, is a very important part of biological evolution.”

“Understanding the reproductive strategies employed by early frogs could offer valuable insights into their complete reproductive history,” he added.

“As the frog was skeletally immature, the researchers ruled out old age as her cause of death. Environmental factors, such as abrupt changes in water conditions or algae blooms, were also unlikely, as evidence of this would've been apparent in the deposits studied,” said Du.

(With inputs from agencies)