Lungless frogs and legged snakes

If you like weird herps, this is a good week for you.

  • Scientists working in Borneo have discovered that the frog Barbourula kalimantanensis has no lungs. Although the amphibian was discovered three decades ago, it is so rare that the only specimen that was collected was not dissected in order to preserve it. When researchers found another and opened it up, though, they found that Barbourula was missing lungs and that other organs filled the space they normally would have occupied. This allowed the frog to become flatter and increase the surface area of its body so that it could breathe through its skin (which many amphibians do), although we'll have to wait for details until the research is published in Current Biology.

    [Check out Zooillogix for more]

  • The Late Cretaceous snake Eupodophis descouensi has been recognized as one of the few fossil known snakes to possess limbs, but a new specimen of this animal is giving researchers another look at its anatomy. Such fossils are rare and their evolutionary relationships are still being worked out, although new fossils are starting to help determine when and why snakes lost their legs (see this 2006 Nature paper describing the new species Najash rionegrina).

    [Hat-tip to PZ]

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