Ancient Frogs In Mass Grave Died From Too Much Sex

posted by hubie on Tuesday August 30 2022, @07:58PM

from the all-things-in-moderation dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Frogs once lived alongside dinosaurs. About 45 million years ago, the North Sea covered half of Germany. It's incredible to think these little creatures survived the dinosaurs' extinction. But a lower level mass death did take place in what is now called the Geiseltal region in central Germany and the cause has long remained a mystery.
Hundreds of frog fossils were found in a mass grave in Geiseltal's 45-million-year-old swampy coastlands, and their reason for being there has confounded scientists for decades. But my team's study found an explanation: they died from exhaustion while mating.
[...] Other scientists thought the Geiseltal frogs and toads died when lakes dried up and oxygen levels decreased rapidly. But our research showed this was unlikely as the frogs could have easily made their way to nearby water bodies. We also found evidence the frog carcasses floated in the water for some time before they sank to the lake bottom. So the lake didn't dry out.
Our comparisons of Geiseltal skeletons with modern frogs revealed most Geiseltal frogs were actually toads. Toads follow a land based lifestyle, except when they return to ponds to mate. They mated with numerous other toads during the very short mating season which, in some modern tropical species, lasts for just hours.

Sex can be a death trap for modern toad and frog species. Individuals are regularly overcome by exhaustion and drown. Female frogs and toads are at higher risk of drowning as they are often submerged underwater by one or more males. Even today, mass toad graves are found on migration routes and near or in mating ponds. This was likely to be the same situation for the Geiseltal specimens.
[...] The most likely explanation for why there are several groups of frogs, each numbering in the hundreds, that died almost at the same time in different ponds, is that their enthusiastic mating killed them. It explains why similar mass graves have been found in different parts of the world.
While these mating deaths sound extreme, a far more common cause of frog and toad mortality is humans destroying their homes, polluting water sources and spreading disease.
Frogs and toads survived several climate changes and extinction events on earth. However, some species have gone extinct. In 2021 one of the few remaining frog species of an ancient lineage of amphibians was declared likely extinct, having not been seen in 60 years.
[...] Frogs and toads live nearly everywhere including on trees, in flowers, in the jungle and in the desert. Some look almost as colorful as a rainbow and others can even fly. Imagine these creatures feeding next to a T-Rex. It would be a tragedy if we lost any more species.

Journal Reference:
Daniel Falk, Oliver Wings, Maria E. McNamara, The skeletal taphonomy of anurans from the Eocene Geiseltal Konservat-Lagerstätte, Germany: insights into the controls on fossil anuran preservation [open], Papers in Palaeontology, 2022. DOI: 10.1002/spp2.1453

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