How About a Frog Which Could and Likely Did Eat Small Dinosaurs #Science #Biology

Meet the Pacman frog otherwise known as a South American horned frog and isn't he a beauty.  He's also the modern ancestor of Beelzebufo which has got to be the coolest scientific name ever.  You already know you don't want to meet Beelzebub and Bufo is the genus name for a large number of South American toads.  (WIKI:  Bufo)

Zen Yogi:  so is he a toad or a frog or what?

Unknown, mate.

True toads have in common stocky figures and short legs, which make them relatively poor jumpers. As with all members of the family Bufonidae, they lack a tail and teeth, and they have horizontal pupils. Their dry skin is thick and warty.

Behind their eyes, Bufo species have wart-like structures, the parotoid glands. These glands distinguish the true toads from all other tailless amphibians. They secrete a fatty, white poisonous substance which acts as a deterrent to predators. Ordinary, handling of toads is not dangerous, and, contrary to folk belief, does not cause warts. The poison of most if not all toads contains bufotoxin; the poison of the Colorado River toad (Bufo alvarius) is a potent hallucinogen containing 5-MeO-DMT and bufotenin. The poison's psychoactive effects are said to have been known to pre-Columbian Native Americans.

- WIKI

The bufotoxin must be similar to the cane toad which plagues Australia after someone cleverly imported them from Nicaragua to control some other pest.  That ploy didn't work and some parts of Australia wound up infested with them.  Some clever fellow figured it out on the toad's hallucinogenic properties and so the world was introduced to toad-licking as had apparently happened previously with at least one tribe of Indians.


There is emphasis on the absence of teeth since Beelzebufo had plenty of them.  The interest in Pacman is because he has immensely powerful jaws.

An individual Ceratophrys cranwelli biting a force transducer. Leather strips glued to ends of bite bars provide a natural surface that encourages high-effort biting and avoids damage to teeth and bones. The strips also indicate a bite point for standardization of bite-force performance.

Credit: Scientific Reports (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-11968-6


Scientists say that a large, now extinct, frog called Beelzebufo that lived about 68 million years ago in Madagascar would have been capable of eating small dinosaurs.

The conclusion comes from a study of the bite force of South American horned frogs from the living genus Ceratophrys, known as Pacman frogs for their characteristic round shape and large mouth, similar to the video game character Pac-Man. Due to their attractive body colouring, voracious appetite, and comically huge heads, horned frogs are very popular in the international pet trade.
Published today in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, the scientists from University of Adelaide, California State Polytechnic University – Pomona, University of California – Riverside and UCL, University College London found that living large South American horned frogs have similar bite forces to those of mammalian predators.

Phys.org:  Bite force research reveals dinosaur-eating frog

We see Pacman has a formidable ancestor.


Whenever there's such a vast difference between an ancient and extinct animal and its descendants, study of the why becomes magnetic for scientists.

A thematic diagram showing a cut across the skull showing the position of the denticulate plates that covered the soft palate. On the left is at resting stage, on the right, ventral movement of the soft palate by retraction of the eyeballs, during feeding

Credit: University of Toronto Mississauga


The idea of being bitten by a nearly toothless modern frog or salamander sounds laughable, but their ancient ancestors had a full array of teeth, large fangs and thousands of tiny hook-like structures called denticles on the roofs of their mouths that would snare prey, according to new research by paleontologists at the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM).

Science Daily:  Ancient amphibian had mouthful of teeth ready to grab you

Beelzebufo didn't just have teeth, he had fangs, and it looks like he was the most bad ass amphibian who ever lived.


The Rockhouse confesses to a relative lack of interest in amphibian dentition but there are multiple source links for the interested student.

Zen Yogi:  Tyrannosaurus kermit?

That one is kind of cool, Yogi, but Beelzebufo kills.  It's practically a John Carpenter movie title without change.