What is a disaster for one perhaps is a blessing for other. It is an established and uncontradicted theory that ‘impact of meteor’ has wiped out dinosaurs from the earth’s surface, which dominated the terrestrial ecosystems for over 160 million years.
But, surprisingly, it has recently been revealed that while the huge mammals were disappearing, accounting to the meteor impact, the same phenomenon was leading to the appearance of 162 species of Caribbean frogs!
Interestingly, they are claimed to have descended from a single South American species, with an odd sort of feature – none have a tadpole phase!
Instead, they hatched completely out of eggs!
Named Eleutherodactlus, the 800 or so frog species today make up a fifth of all living frog species. Not just that! They eventually also compose the largest vertebrate genus.
Blair Hedges, a biologist at Pennsylvania State University said,
The reason it’s been the largest genus of vertebrates is because it’s a taxonomic waste can. These frogs don’t give you a lot of characteristics to work with. In other words, many frog species fitting the same general description were dumped into the same genus – a level of classification just above species – simply for lack of better information.
However, the new study provides a Caribbean branch to its family tree, supporting the meteor impact connection.
So, cuing from this phenomenon, we can well predict the future impact of global warming – with the scientists already fearing the disappearance of several species from the planet, many new species are to appear replacing them to suit the then changed climate.