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Researchers Calvin So and Arjan Mann: Puppet Kermit in the background, amphibian Kermitops in their hands

Photo: James D. Tiller and James D. Loreto / Smithsonian Institution

Science can be dry. Researchers now want to show that there is another way by choosing a name for a 270 million year old ancestor of the amphibians. They examined a fossilized skull of such an animal.

"Since this animal is a distant relative of today's amphibians and Kermit is a modern amphibian icon, this was the perfect name," said Calvin So of George Washington University, lead author of the study. "The choice of the name Kermit has implications for the way we can bring the science conducted by paleontologists in museums to the general public." His hope is to inspire people to engage in scientific discovery.

Already dug up in the eighties

The skull examined is just over a centimeter long and has large, oval-shaped eye sockets. It was unearthed by a paleontologist in Texas in 1984. The team collected so many fossils in the area and stored them in a museum that not all of the remains could be examined in more detail, they say.

The researchers changed that now: They wanted to find out what type of prehistoric creature the fossil belongs to. The skull has a number of features that differ from the skulls of older tetrapods, the ancestors of amphibians and other living four-legged vertebrates, the statement said. The area of ​​the skull behind the eyes is much shorter than the elongated, curved snout. These skull proportions may have helped the animal prey on tiny, maggot-like insects.

The scientists first assigned the fossil to a group of animals that lived for over 200 million years until the Triassic period. But because the skull has such unique features, the scientists came to the conclusion that the animal must belong to a completely new genus. They called them Kermitops. The name is an allusion to the cartoonish, wide-open face of the Kermit doll, plus the Greek suffix “-ops,” which means “face.” The frog Kermit is part of the comedy series “Muppet Show”.

It is said that it is difficult to understand the development of frogs because records of amphibians and their ancestors are patchy. "Kermitops offers us clues to close this huge fossil gap," said So. The results were published in the scientific journal "Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society."

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