A group of Australian scientists has found a curious”chocolate frog” tree frog at the lowland rainforests of New Guinea.
Tree frogs are known for their green skin but owing to the brownish coloring, researchers called it”chocolate frog” — and the title stuck.
“The nearest known relative of Litoria mira is your Australian green tree frog. The two species look similar except is generally green, although the new species generally has a beautiful chocolate colouring,” Paul Oliver of the Centre for Planetary Health and Food Security and Queensland Museum, that described the discovery at a co-authored newspaper in the journal that the Australian Journal of Zoology stated in a statement.
Australia and New Guinea were linked by property for a lot of the late Tertiary period 2.6 million years back but today, New Guinea is dominated by volcano, while northern Australia is largely savannah. Green tree frogs (Litoria caerulea) could be located throughout eastern and southern Australia and New Guinea.
Australian scientists found among those critters in 2016, according to the newspaper, and they believe the creature could be widespread across New Guinea. “Since the frog lives in rather hot, swampy areas with a great deal of crocodiles, these items discourage mining,” co-author Steve Richards in the South Australian Museum Richards stated.
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Though the creatures may seem like the magic, enchanted snacks located in the Harry Potter series, the similarities stop there.
“We called this new Litoria frog species Mira, so surprised or odd in Latin, since it was a sudden discovery to discover an over-looked comparative of Austalia’s famous and ordinary green shrub residing in the lowland rainforests of New Guinea,” Oliver explained.
“Resolving the biotic interchange between both of these areas is essential to knowing the way the rainforest and savannah habitat types have expanded and contracted over [the] period of the two,” Oliver explained.
“Quotes for divergence of the new species in our research proves that from the Pliocene (5.3 to 2.6 million years ago) there was nevertheless connectivity between the 2 species throughout lowland tropical lands of northern Australia and New Guinea,” he further added.