Wednesday, October 03, 2007

New species of frog is smallest land vertebrate

Nyctibatrachus minimus There are over 2,400 species of land vertebrates (excluding fish) in India, and around 218 species of frog, but a newly discovered species, Nyctibatrachus minimus, is believed to be the smallest of them all at only 10 millimetres long.

A new nightfrog, Nyctibatrachus minimus sp. nov. (Anura: Nyctibatrachidae): The smallest frog from India. Current Science 93, 25 September 2007, 854
(very slow, but it will download eventually)

2 comments:

weight loss said...

it makes no scientific sense that there is a vertebrate this small, it must be so fragile!

AJC said...

It's only the smallest land vertebrate in India (possibly the world), certainly not the smallest vertebrate, which is undoubtedly a fish, although exactly which species is a bit controversial. The best candidate so far is Paedocypris progenetica.