At 41cm long and weighing more than a newborn baby, the Beelzebufo frog is considered the largest frog that has ever existed, with incredible hunting abilities.
The largest frog in existence is the Goliath frog (Conraua goliath), which live in Africa. They can grow to over 30cm in length and weigh over 3kg. However, they are still smaller than Beelzebufo, which is considered the largest frog that ever lived on Earth. They grow to 41cm in length and weigh around 4.5kg, heavier than a newborn baby.
Beelzebufo frogs, also known as devil frogs, are now extinct, but they roamed the island of Madagascar during the late Cretaceous period, about 65 to 70 million years ago. This means they lived on Earth at the same time as many dinosaurs.
They were formally described scientifically in 2008 based on a collection of fossils. These fossils showed that they had such a large body size that they were given the scientific name Beelzebufo shield. The name comes from the Greek word “Beelzebub”, meaning “devil”, and the Latin word “bufo”, meaning toad. Meanwhile, “ampinga” refers to the armored top of their heads.
“This frog is a relative of today’s horned frog, about the size of a flattened beach ball, with short legs and a large mouth,” Professor Susan Evans from the School of Life Sciences at University College London described the Beelzebufo frog.
When extinct giants have living relatives, experts can study the behavior of these relatives to learn more about how ancient animals lived. “If they were aggressive and used the ‘sit and wait’ ambush tactics of today’s horned frogs, Beelzebufo frogs would have been formidable predators of small animals. Their diet likely included insects and small vertebrates such as lizards, but they may have also eaten hatchlings or juvenile dinosaurs,” Evans added.
In a study published in the journal Scientific Reports In a 2017 study on the bite force of the Beelzebufo frog, a team of experts at California Polytechnic State University used their horned frog relatives as models. Specifically, they gave the frogs Ceratophrys cranwelli biting a hard stick. Compare the strength and jaw morphology of frogs. Ceratophrys cranwelli Given what is known about Beelzebufo, the team concludes that Beelzebufo most likely ate large prey.
“Since in many tetrapods prey size increases with body size, and Beelzebufo was clearly capable of biting with great force, large individuals could have preyed on a wide range of contemporaneous animals, including small crocodiles and small non-avian dinosaurs,” the team concluded.