Frog as big as a bowling ball

Bowlin'!

A frog, the size of a bowling ball lived in the time dinosaurs lived in! This discovery of the Beelzebufo or Devil Toad captured the attention of scientists that found the frog's fossils.

The frog's cousin is the Malagasy frog, largest known living cousin. The Malagasy frog's bones were in Madagascar. It weighs 10 pounds and is 16in. long. (That is heavier than a newborn baby!) This frog is related to another frog smaller than this but in South America. David Krause, a paleantologist from one of New York's univercities began finding peices of abnormally large frog fossils in Madagascar off the coast of Africa, in 1993. They dated back to the late Cretaceous period. Over in Madagascar, Krause found crocodile and dinosaur fossils. Krause's team assembled enough frog fossils to piece together what it would have looked like and how much it weighed.

The largest living frog, the Goliath frog of West Africa, can reach 7 pounds. But Krause said that it isnt related to the Beelzebufo. He said that it seems to be a relative of South American horned frogs. South American horned frogs are popular as pets, they're sometimes called pacman frogs for their huge mouths. (I know I won't have one as a pet because if it runs loose inside the house at night, I won't want to feel something slimy, wet and cold crawling in my around in my bed!)
Beelzebufo frogs are different than regular frogs because they have teeth, wide mouth, powerful jaws bones that are extremely thick with ridges and grooves characteristic of some type of armor or protective shield.

(The name comes from the Greek word for devil: Beelzebub. And in Latin for toad, bufo)

Since continents drifted apart, Madagascar would have been separated by ocean from South America during the Beelzebufo's time. And frogs can't survive long in saltwater, Krause noted. Krause thinks that the Beelzebufo provides evidence for competing theories that are still have to do something about the land masses that late in time, perhaps thats why Antarctica was much more warmer than today.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/02/18/frog.fossil.ap/index.html