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News From the Field

Caribbean Frogs Started With a Single, Ancient Voyage on a Raft From South America


June 6, 2007

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Nearly all of the 162 land-breeding frog species on Caribbean islands originated from a single species that rafted on a sea voyage from South America about 30-to-50-million years ago, according to a DNA-sequence-analysis study. The discovery is surprising because no previous theories of how the frogs arrived had predicted a single origin and because groups of close relatives rarely dominate the fauna of an entire continent or major geographic region.Full Story

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Penn State

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