An image of the the Helmeted water toad, a member of the Calyptocephalella gayi and native to South America.

(Getty images)

At a Glance

Scientists found a fossilized South American frog in Antarctica, according to a new report. Other noteworthy findings included fossilized water lily seeds and shark and ray teeth.The fact that cold blooded animals could live on the now freezing continent further strengthens research that the continent used to have a rainforest-like climate.

A frog is not usually the first animal you’d think of when picturing Antarctica’s wildlife. Sooner will the memory conjure a penguin, a seal or perhaps whales. In fact, frogs probably wouldn’t even make the list.

And yet, scientists found a fossilized South American frog in Antarctica, according to a . The fossils represent “the first modern amphibian found in Antarctica,” according to the study.

The research is “the first evidence for freshwater ecosystems in the [Antarctic] peninsula, according to Dr. Thomas Mörs, who authored the study.

Mörs and his colleagues found the frog fossil along with many other specimens on Seymour Island, which sits on the Antarctic Peninsula roughly 700 miles south of Argentina’s Tierra Del Fuego. But he didn’t know what he had discovered until he was back at home.

Mörs, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, went on multiple expeditions to Antarctica in 2011, 2012 and 2013. Only when he returned back to his research lab in Sweden in 2015 and began combing through the thousands of samples he took, did he notice the frog fossil. The specimens, just a few millimeters each, are fragments of the frog’s ornamented skull and a portion of its hip bone.

Other noteworthy findings included fossilized water lily seeds and shark and ray teeth.

“When I was going through samples and I saw this, I said: ‘Wow! That’s a frog!’” . “I knew nothing like this was known from Antarctica. It’s exciting.”

Scientists previously during the Triassic Period, over 200 million years ago, but no traces on the continent of amphibians like those around today.

The fossilized frog’s bones are shaped like those of the Calyptocephalella family, commonly known as helmeted frogs, five species of which now live in different areas of the Chilean Andes in South America. These are the fossilized frog’s modern day relatives, which are currently found in the warm, humid central Chilean Andes.

In 2020, Seymour Island today is barren and rocky. Dr. Mörs and his team found the frog at a site called “Marsupial Site,” they indicate in the report. The spot was so named “because, in 2007, a different team discovered a fossil marsupial there with modern relatives that live in Nothofagus forests in Chile and Argentina,” .

Antarctica wasn’t always the frozen tundra we’ve come to look to with reverence and awe. Ninety million years ago, it was actually a temperate rainforest, . It is therefore not surprising that cold-blooded animals such as frogs lived there 40 million years ago, as the new research suggests.

“This frog is one more indication that in [that] time, at least around the Peninsula, it was still a suitable habitat for cold-blooded animals like reptiles and amphibians,” .

The study's findings suggested that the forests of South America may be a "modern analogue" of the Antarctic climate just before its glaciation and may now be home to other species originally found across the Antarctic peninsula.

Earlier this year, scientists reported that they had found the in Antarctica last year— mussels. The discovery near the largest of the South Shetland Islands is a omen of a potential invasion of the continent, the researchers suggest, particularly as climate change and increased ship traffic plague the region.

It is not a novel concept that and this is no exception. As the climate continues to change, it is not only interesting, but important to understand Antarctica's past.

Mörs isn’t done with the continent, yet.

“I’m interested what else would live in freshwater ecosystems,” like around the Seymour Peninsula.

“The frogs are tolerant to cold,” the paleontologist said. “They can hibernate. So it would be interesting to see if there were also reptiles around.”