A new species of frog had been discovered and it has been described as “astronomically small,” by Mark Scherz, who is an evolutionary biologist at Ludwig-Maximilians Universistat in Munich, Germany.
It is so tiny that the newly discovered Malagasy amphibians had scientific names such as: Mini mum, Mini ature, and Mini scule. Mini is an all-new genus of frog, according to a report by National Geographic.
“You could sit the brain on the top of a pin. It’s amazing that they have all the same organs you or I have in our bodies, but in a package that can fit four times on your own thumbnail,” Scherz said.
The study on these three tiny frog species has been published in the journal PLoS ONE. It shows that they are part of an informal group called “microfrogs.”
Scherz and his colleagues have discovered more than 40 microfrogs since studying about the species in 2014.
Thanks to molecular and genetic work, Schlerz and his team used a microCT scan to examine the new set of species and differentiated each of them from one another. They managed to prove that the three were indeed unique species by analyzing data from its teeth and bones.
