[Taxacom] Antarctic fossil frog

[John Grehan]

Nice little paper: First fossil frog from Antarctica: implications for
Eocene high latitude climate conditions and Gondwanan cosmopolitanism of
Australobatrachia https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-61973-5.pdf

40 Ma fossil found on Seymour Island, Antarctic Peninsula. The frog is most
closely related to a Chilean group - no surprise there. This group has its
sister clade in Australia and New Guinea. This group is largely allopatric
to other basal frog groups. This is consistent with the ancestor being
widespread between Australia and South America, including Antarctica, but
not necessarily all of Antarctica. There are various distributional
patterns indicating some with a widespread ancestral west Antarctica
ancestral range and others with an east Antarctica range. As documented by
Heads (2017) this contrast can even occur in allopatric sister taxa.

John Grehan