Living high in the tops of the trees, nobody had set eyes on the frog for over a century. But all that changed when it was recently rediscovered in an Indian forest, and found to be much more widely distributed than previously thought. Despite being resurrected, the researchers warn that with the way the environment is being treated across the Indian subcontinent, the chance is still there that it might be lost again, but this time forever.
Originally classified as Polypedates jerdonii after the zoologist who first caught it, following DNA testing on the amphibian the researchers who rediscovered it found it to be so genetically distinct from all other species of tree frog that it warrants being given its own genus. The frog is now classed as Frankixalus jerdonii, and brings the number of frogs discovered by the renowned Indian biologist Sathyabhama Das Biju to an impressive 79.
The frog was last recorded in the wild in 1870 by Thomas Jerdon, and since then presumed extinct. That is until 2007, when a team of researchers hunting for other amphibians on the forest floor heard an unusual call emanating from the canopy. “We heard a full musical orchestra coming from the tree tops. It was magical. Of course we had to investigate,” Biju, the lead author of the paper published in PLOS ONE in which the new discovery is described, told the Associated Press.