Alytidae

The Alytidae are a family of primitive frogs. Their common name is painted frogs or midwife toads. Most are endemic to Europe, but three species occur in northwest Africa, and a species formerly thought to be extinct is found in Israel.

Alytidae

Christian Fischer · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Also called
midwife toadsPBDB
Sits inside
AnuraPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Temnospondyli
Life habit
amphibiousPBDB, for Temnospondyli
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Temnospondyli
Environment
brackish,freshwater,terrestrialPBDB, for Tetrapoda

Time the record covers

At least 129 million years on record.

The record covers at least 141 Mya to 11.63 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 145.06 Mya to 5.333 Mya.

Late Jurassic — about 0 of 22 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 1 of 22 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 14 of 22 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 22 occurrencesEocene — about 1 of 22 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 2 of 22 occurrencesMiocene — about 4 of 22 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 0 of 22 occurrences148–143 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences143–138 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences75–70 Mya — about 4 occurrences70–66 Mya — about 10 occurrences61–56 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences56–51 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences51–46 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences46–41 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences41–36 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences36–32 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences32–27 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences27–22 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences12–7.4 Mya — about 4 occurrences7.4–2.5 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences141 Mya11.63 Mya148 Mya3 Mya

22 occurrences of Alytidae on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

22 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

7 formations

Pui Beds — 45.49°N, 23.09°EDensuș-Ciula — 45.62°N, 22.78°ERâul Mare — 45.57°N, 22.87°ESynthem CB1 — 42.79°N, 11.37°ESînpetru — 45.55°N, 22.91°EŞard — 46.03°N, 23.55°EKsar Metlili — 32.70°N, 3.22°W

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The named rock units Alytidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 8 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Alytidae and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

Where Alytidae and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

301 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 20 sites for Alytidae, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

12 references

Each of the 22 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Alytidae

Credit
Christian Fischer
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Alytidae was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itAnura through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Fitzinger 1843)