No, wait, THIS is the world’s smallest frog

In December of 2011, Fred Kraus from the Bishop Museum in Hawaii announced that he had discovered the world’s smallest frogs. The two coin-sized species were just 8.1 to 9.3 millimetres long. But these miniscule amphibians now share a different record – they were the world’s smallest frogs for the shortest amount of time. Less than a month after Kraus’s announcement, Eric Rittmeyer and Christopher Austin from Louisiana University have found an even smaller frog, just 7 to 8 millimetres long. It’s dwarfed by a dime. It’s not just the world’s smallest frog, but the world’s smallest back-boned animal. The new species, Paedophryne amauensis, is a close relative of the tiny pair from December – Paedophryne dekot and Paedophryne verrucosa). Extremely tiny frogs have evolved at least 11 times, but the Paedophryne group is unique in that all of its membersare miniscule. They were first discovered in 2002, and six ...