May 15, 2025
Fossils found near Boat Mountain at Murgon have been identified as Australia’s earliest species of tree frog.
A study published this week in the Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology says the new species, Litoria tylerantiqua, has been dated to about 55 million years ago.
The fossils have challenged previous ideas of when Australian tree frogs (pelodryadids) and South American frogs (phyllomedusids) parted ways on the evolutionary tree.
Scientists had believed the tree frogs separated from each other about 33 million years ago.
Until now, it was thought the earliest Australian tree frogs came from the Late Oligocene (about 26 million years ago) and the Early Miocene (23 million years ago). Fossils from the Late Oligocene have been found in the Northern Territory and South Australia, while fossils from the Early Miocene have been found in the Riversleigh area in Queensland.
The new species from Murgon extends the fossil record of pelodryadids by about 30 million years, to a time potentially close to the divergence of Australian and South American tree frogs.
Around 55 million years ago, Australia, Antarctica and South America were linked together as the last remnants of the southern supercontinent Gondwana. Global climates were warmer during this period and a forested corridor linked South America and Australia.
The scientists, from the University of NSW and the Australian National University, used CT scans of preserved frogs from museum collections to compare the three-dimensional shape of the Murgon fossils with those of living species.
Litoria tylerantiqua joins the only other Murgon frog, the ground-dwelling Platyplectrum casca (previously described as Lechriodus casca), as the oldest frogs known from Australia.
The new species has been named in honour of the late Michael Tyler, an Australian herpetologist celebrated internationally for his research on frogs and toads.
Ref. Farman. R. M., Archer, M., & Hand, S. J. (2025) Early Eocene pelodryadid from the Tingamarra Local Fauna, Murgon, south-eastern Queensland, Australia, and a new fossil calibration for molecular phylogenies of frogs. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. https://doi.org/10.1080/02724634.2025.2477815
