探索发现：史前“魔鬼蛙” 专吃小恐龙

探索发现：史前“魔鬼蛙” 专吃小恐龙
Frogzilla the killer: The toad who liked to eat dinosaurs for breakfast

Most frogs prefer a diet of flies, snails and - if they're feeling adventurous - an occasional minnow.

But if you weigh 10lb and resemble a squashed beach ball, it's not surprising if your appetite stretches to something more filling.

According to fossil experts, the Beelzebufo frog, newly-discovered on the island of Madagascar, dined on baby dinosaurs.

Beelzebufo - or "frog from hell" - terrorised prehistoric Earth during the dying days of the dinosaurs more than 70 million years ago.

At 16in long, it was twice the size of the largest frogs alive today and one of the largest ever discovered.

Professor Susan Evans, of University College London, who identified it, said: "This frog is a relative of today's horned toads.

"If it shared their aggressive temperament, it would have been a formidable predator on small animals. It might even have eaten hatchling or juvenile dinosaurs."

The discovery of the frog, reported Tuesday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, is forcing fossil experts to think again about how the continents used to be connected.

Madagascar split from Africa around 160 million years ago but remained connected to India, South America, Antarctica and Australia.

It was thought that Madagascar and India broke away from the other continents around 120 million years ago, while Madagascar went its own way around 88 million years ago.

However, the giant frog finding suggests that a land bridge between Madagascar and South America remained until late into the dinosaur age.

蛙类多以飞蝇、蜗牛为食——如果它们想冒冒险——偶尔也会吃吃小鱼。

但如果它体重达10磅，体型像一个被挤扁的沙滩球，那么胃口大增也并不奇怪。

生物化石专家最近在马达加斯加岛上新发现了一种“魔鬼蛙”（Beelzebufo 希腊语：魔鬼）化石，据介绍，这种蛙类主要以恐龙幼崽为食。

据考证，“魔鬼蛙”是距今七千多万年前恐龙时代末期（即白垩纪后期）的恐怖统治者。

这种蛙类身长16英寸，体型为现存体积最大的蛙类的两倍，是迄今发现的体型最大的蛙类之一。

鉴定出“魔鬼蛙”化石的伦敦大学教授苏珊•伊万斯说：“这种蛙类的现代近亲是角蟾。”

“如果它与角蟾一样，生性凶猛，那么它应该是一种专以小动物为食的可怕的食肉动物。它甚至可能以刚孵出的恐龙或恐龙幼崽为食。”

这个新发现于本周二在《国家自然科学院院刊》上公布，同时它也促使生物化石专家重新思考远古时代的大陆板块究竟是如何连接的。

马达加斯加在大约1.6亿年前与非洲大陆分离，但与印度、南美洲、南极洲和澳洲仍连接在一起。

据称，马达加斯加和印度板块在约1.2亿年前与其它大陆板块分离，到了8800万年前，马达加斯加又与印度板块分离。

然而，有关“巨蛙”的最新发现表明，马达加斯加和南美洲之间曾经由一条大陆桥连接，直到恐龙时代后期消失。