Beelzebufo
genus of giant frogs (fossil)
Beelzebufo ( or ) (meaning "devil toad") is an extinct genus of hyloid frog from the Late Cretaceous Berivotra and Maevarano Formations, approximately 70 million years ago in what is now Madagascar. The type species is B. ampinga, and common names assigned by the popular media to it include devil frog, devil toad, and the frog from hell.
Discovery and naming
The first fossil bones were found in 1993 by David W. Krause of New York's Stony Brook University, and the species Beelzebufo ampinga was named and described by Evans, Jones & Krause (2008). The holotype is specimen UA 9600, consisting of a fused cervical and second presacral centra.
These specimens were then described in more detail by Evans, Jones, and Krause (2014).
Some 100 fossil isolated partial bones have been found between 1993 and 2011. Some portions of articulated skull are also known: specimen FMNH PR 2512 (a specimen discovered in 2010 which preserves most of the braincase, part of the palate, part of the skull roof and several pre-sacral vertebrae) and specimen FMNH PR 2512 (which preserves one of the posterior flanges). Researchers have been able to reconstruct parts of the frog's skeleton, including nearly the entire skull.
Description
In early studies, it is suggested that Beelzebufo had snout-vent lengths of up to 42.5 cm (16.7 in). However in later studies, animals of this species are estimated to have grown to at least 23.2 cm (9.1 in) in snout-vent length, which is around the size a modern African bullfrog can reach.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Beelzebufo” is genus of giant frogs (fossil). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Beelzebufo, genus and giant, not as a finished interpretation.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q814066. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1993, 2008, 2014 and 2011.
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This entry incorporates text from “Beelzebufo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.