Australobatrachia Explained

Australobatrachia ("southern frogs") is a clade of frogs in the suborder Neobatrachia. It comprises three families of frogs with a Gondwanan distribution, being known from Chile, Australia, and New Guinea. Together, they form the sister group to the superfamily Hyloidea.^{[1] [2]}

Taxonomy

The common ancestor of all three families inhabited South America during the Early Cretaceous (about 125 million years ago). By about 100 million years ago, the ancestors of the Calyptocephalellidae diverged from the Myobatrachoidea, as the ancestral Myobatrachoidea moved south, colonizing the Australian continent via then-unglaciated Antarctica. The two families within Myobatrachoidea diverged from each other later in the Cretaceous or during the earliest Paleocene.^[3]

Australobatrachia contains the following subgroups:^[4]

• Calyptocephalellidae - Chilean toads (5 species)
• Myobatrachoidea
  • Limnodynastidae - Australian ground frogs (44 species)
  • Myobatrachidae - Australian froglets and Australian toadlets (91 species)

Notes and References

1. Feng . Yan-Jie . Blackburn . David C. . Liang . Dan . Hillis . David M. . Wake . David B. . Cannatella . David C. . Zhang . Peng . 2017-07-18 . Phylogenomics reveals rapid, simultaneous diversification of three major clades of Gondwanan frogs at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . en . 114 . 29 . E5864–E5870 . 10.1073/pnas.1704632114 . 0027-8424 . 5530686 . 28673970. free .
2. Web site: Australobatrachia . 2022-08-20 . www.mv.helsinki.fi.
3. Web site: Fossilworks: Australobatrachia . 2022-08-20 . www.fossilworks.org.
4. Otero . Rodrigo A. . Jimenez-Huidobro . Paulina . Soto-Acuña . Sergio . Yury-Yáñez . Roberto E. . 2014-11-01 . Evidence of a giant helmeted frog (Australobatrachia, Calyptocephalellidae) from Eocene levels of the Magallanes Basin, southernmost Chile . Journal of South American Earth Sciences . en . 55 . 133–140 . 10.1016/j.jsames.2014.06.010 . 0895-9811.