A tiny amphibian that lived 99 million years ago had a secret weapon: A tongue that shot out of its mouth like a bullet to snatch its prey. It’s the earliest known example of this “ballistic tongue” style of predation, researchers say.
The amphibian is a new species, represented by a few tiny bits of skeleton and soft tissue discovered in chunks of Myanmar amber. The centerpiece of these finds is a newly discovered complete skull, exquisitely preserved in 3-D, that includes a long thin bone connected to the creature’s neck, with some remnants of tongue attached to the end.
The creature, which measured just 52 millimeters long from snout to pelvis (not including a tail), used this bone to shoot its tongue out of its mouth and catch prey. This “sit-and-wait” style of predation is similar to that of a modern chameleon, researchers report in the Nov. 6 Science.
Led by paleontologist Juan Daza of Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, the team dubbed the creature Yaksha perettii. “Yaksha” is a type of nature spirit in Myanmar folklore, thought to protect the roots of trees, and “perettii” is in honor of Swiss mineralogist Adolf Peretti, who discovered the fossil.