Welcome to one of those annoying teaser posts - I'd post something substantive, if only I had the time.
But I don't.
The adjacent photo shows Pristimantis charlottevillensis, a strabomantid from Tobago that was named in 1995. Believe it or don't, strabomantids are sometimes known as squatting prophet frogs. The group was only named in 2008, and was previously included within the hyloid group Brachycephalidae [previously discussed here].
The photo was taken by John C. Murphy and is used with his kind permission.
Hey - how do people get those open thread things going?
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By being PZ.
But I can try anyway: Two days ago, I was at a wedding in southern Serbia. There was bacon.
Ok, already I dislike the direction this is heading in. I call a halt to the open thread thing :)
I did a double take when I saw the word "strabomantid". I'd never heard of that family before, and the name certainly wasn't included in your series of frog posts.
Oh by the way, I found the skull of some sort of mammal in one of the local nature areas here in Singapore. I'm guessing it's the cranium of a wild boar that's missing the premaxilla. Can someone help confirm my suspicions? I forgot to take measurements (damn!), but the skull was approximately 30 centimetres long.
Photos are at the bottom of this Flickr set:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hai_ren/sets/72157619086830100/
That is definitely a pig skull.
As for strabomantids, they were named here...
Hedges, S. B., Duellman, W. E. & Heinicke, M. P. 2008. New World direct-developing frogs (Anura: Terranura): molecular phylogeny, classification, biogeography, and conservation. Zootaxa 1737, 1-182.
The same paper also named the new higher taxa Craugastoridae, Phyzelaphryninae, Holoadeninae and Strabomantinae, plus loads of new species and genera.
ah, strabomantids, here on North Andes Pristimantis spp are pretty dominant in many environments, from all student time they were Eleutherodactylids, this taxa looks to be splitted in many ones.....also once found a terrestrial nest of P.rivetti, is very weird to see a frog egg with a froglike embryo(rater than a tadpolish one)inside...
Here's an open thread idea: everyone post links* to their personal photos of dead animals or their parts. Why not live animals? Because they get too much attention as it is. You'll never see a big-screen documentary on rotting carcasses (more's the pity).
*Not more than one or two per comment or you'll end up in the spam filter and Darren will murder me.
Hai-Ren has led the way. Here's my entry. Your turn!
I like that idea, here's my contribution.
You mean this one?
That doesn't look like a big skull to me. I cleaned one of those babies a couple of months ago and photographed it -- see here.
There's no way those are the same animal.
[from Darren: delayed by a day because of spam-filter, sorry]
Mike - you mean pig skull, not 'big skull'? 'Your' skull is from a freakish domestic variety: different in shape from a feral/wild-type pig.
Er, yes. "Pig skull". That's what I meant.
As are you seriously telling me that, domestic variety or not, the skulls in the images that I linked in my previous post are THE SAME SPECIES?
Yes.
Well, then I give up. What's the point in trying to do palaeotaxonomy based on the morphological species concept when the skulls of an extant species vary so much? From now on, it's Sauropoda incertae sedis for me!
As David might say, it depends on what definition for "species" you're using this week.
Domestic animals (like your pig) have been selectively bred in all kinds of crazy trajectories by humans. The range of variation present within domestic species typically well exceeds that present in wild species. Compare domestic dog skulls.