270-Million-Year-Old Proto-Amphibian's Fossil Unearthed, Named As Kermit Frog

Experts unearthed a 270-million-year-old fossil of a proto-amphibian and they named it as Kermit the Frog.

Paleontologists from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History rediscovered the ancient amphibian ancestor's fossilized skull while they were looking through the museum's archives. The team of researchers described the fossil that they discovered as a new species of proto-amphibian, which they named Kermitops gratus in honor of the iconic Muppet, Kermit the Frog.

Ancient Amphibian

According to Calvin So, a doctoral student at the George Washington University and the lead author on the recent study, naming the new creature after the beloved frog character is considered as an opportunity to get people excited about the discoveries scientists make using museum collections.

"Using the name Kermit has significant implications for how we can bridge the science that is done by paleontologists in museums to the general public," So said.

So expressed belief that since this animal is a distant relative of today's amphibians, and Kermit is a modern-day amphibian icon, it was the perfect name for it.

The fossilized skull-which measures just over an inch long and possesses large, oval-shaped eye sockets-was originally unearthed by the late paleontologist Nicholas Hotton III, who served as a curator in the museum's paleobiology department for nearly 40 years.

Fossils From Texas

To recall, Hotton spent several field seasons excavating fossils from rock outcrops in north central Texas known as the Red Beds. The area's rust-colored rocks date back to the early Permian period more than 270 million years ago and contain the fossilized remains of ancient reptiles, amphibians and sail-backed synapsids, the precursors to modern mammals.

Hotton and his team collected so many fossils that they were not able to study all of them in detail.

This collection had included a small proto-amphibian skull, which the team had unearthed in a rock layer known as the Clear Fork Formation in 1984. Further, the skull was deposited in the Smithsonian's National Fossil Collection, where it spent decades waiting for a researcher to take a closer look.

In 2021, Arjan Mann, a postdoctoral paleontologist at the museum, was sifting through Hotton's trove of Texas fossils when one specimen labeled as an early amphibian had caught his eye.

Mann and So then teamed up to determine what kind of prehistoric creature the fossil belonged to.

They discovered that the skull possessed a mishmash of traits that were different from features seen in the skulls of older tetrapods or the ancient ancestors of amphibians and other living four-legged vertebrates.

Moreover, the researchers identified the fossil as a temnospondyl, which is considered as a diverse group of primitive amphibian relatives that lived for over 200 million years from the Carboniferous to the Triassic periods.

However, because the animal's skull sported such unique features, the scientists concluded that it belonged in an entirely new genus, which they named Kermitops.