68 million years ago there was a monumental frog the size of an inflatable beach ball with a bite so powerful that it was capable of hunting and devouring small dinosaurs back in the Late Cretaceous. It is Beelzebufo ampinga and is undoubtedly the largest frog known to date, according to the study published by a team of scientists from California Polytechnic State University in Pomona (California) and the University of Adelaide (Australia) in the journal Scientific Reports.
Using their similarities to today's Ceratophrys frogs, scientists have detailed the past of this bulky amphibian, which was much larger than any frog we can see today. Also known as 'devil frog', Beelzebufo ampinga was more than 40 centimeters long and weighed about 4.5 kilograms. She was dressed in a powerful armor (ampinga) and a herculean, wide jaw. Scientists believe it must have been the largest frog ever seen. Similar to today's Ceratophrys frogs (commonly known as Pac-Man frogs because of their round body and wide mouth, similar to the character of the well-known video game), experts used knowledge about them to determine the strength of the bite of the ancient Beelzebufo. They used a custom-made force transducer with two leather-covered plates. When the frog bites on the plates, the force of the bite can be accurately detected. A modern Ceratophrys frog, with a head width of 4.5 centimeters, has a bite force of 30 Newtons, or approximately 3 kilograms. This allows the frog, once it has captured its prey with its sticky tongue, to secure the food firmly in motion between its powerful jaws, squeezing it and making it impossible for it to escape. Its name means: beelze = devil, in Greek, bufo = toad, in Latin and ampinga = shield. "Unlike the vast majority of frogs that have weak jaws and habitually consume small prey, horned frogs ambush animals as large as themselves - including other frogs, snakes and rodents, and their powerful jaws play a critical role in grabbing and dominating the prey," comments Marc Jones, co-author of the paper. The scaling method used to determine the bite force of these frogs, linking the bite force to body and head size, is also consistent with the results found for other animals, including fish, reptiles, and rodents. Thus, by extrapolating the bite force results to the size of Beelzebufo's mouth, about 15.4 centimeters wide, the scientists identified a bite force of up to 2,200 Newtons (about 224 kg). That is, the force of their bite would be comparable to that of today's tortoises.
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