A team of researchers led by paleontologist David Krause from the New York Stony Brook University made a curious discovery on the island of Madagascar. Approximately 65 to 70 million years ago lived the largest frog that ever inhabited our planet, roughly the size of a bowling ball, and with unusual eating habits.

What looks like a distant, and bigger, cousin of the frogs that can be found today in South America was actually a baby-dinosaur predator, which made scientists find it an appropriate name: “Beelzebufo” – the Devil Toad. The fossils uncovered in Madagascar date back to the Cretaceous Period, when large dinosaurs and crocodiles dominated the animal world.

It appears that Beelzebufo lived in a semi-arid environment, perfectly blending in, which explains its eating habits too. It did not have an aquatic life style, and scientists assume it hunted down from lizards and small mammals, to dinosaur hatchlings. Considering the age of the fossils, it is very plausible that the species went extinct simultaneously with the dinosaurs.

A study regarding the discovery of the largest frog that ever lived in that part of the world was published on Monday by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Scientists still try to uncover whether there were other frogs living on the African continent that could have been related to the Beelzebufo.

The first discovery of fragments belonging to this particular type of frog have been uncovered in 1993, but it wasn’t until recently that paleontologists managed to put the fragments together and get an ensemble picture of how the 70 million years Devil Toad looked like. Apparently an adult specimen could have reached up to 40 cm, which is approximately twice the size of today’s frogs.

The striking similarities between the African frog and the South American frogs, including the fossils uncovered on the latter continent, support the idea that once the two continents, South America and Africa, together with the island of Madagascar, once formed one single landmass, around the time of the dinosaurs.

Image credits: Luci Betti-Nash