We know tadpoles go back even earlier because we’ve found frogs as early as the Late Triassic (around 217–213 million years ago), but this is the first time we’ve had a fossil to show for it.

A new paper in the journal Nature details the oldest known tadpole fossil. Ringing in 20 million years earlier than scientists previously had evidence of, this fossil might get us closer to an answer.

Paleontologists working in Patagonia have unearthed the oldest-known fossil of a tadpole—and it was a whopper, measuring in at more than six inches long, the size of an adult human hand.. The ...

The tadpole was about 6 inches (16 centimeters) long — like a baseball with a 3-inch-long (7.6 cm) tail. The adult frog is ...

The oldest tadpole fossil ever has been found—and it’s a big one. The discovery in Patagonia shows that frogs have had a tadpole stage for at least 160 million years.

A photograph of a giant, green-and-yellow tadpole longer than a human hand turned up in an X post on Feb. 12, 2025. At the time of this reporting, the post had received more than 296,000 views. At ...

The tadpole was about 6 inches (16 centimeters) long — like a baseball with a 3-inch-long (7.6 cm) tail. The adult frog is just as big, which surprised the researchers.

NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with Regina Barber and Emily Kwong of Short Wave about the oldest known tadpole, new proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem, and the evolutionary roots of alcohol consumption.

Call it a grand-phibian. Scientists have unearthed a fossil of the world’s oldest tadpole in Argentina — a shock finding that could alter our understanding of amphibian evolution, experts say ...

A 161 million-year-old fossil, linked to a line of extinct frog-like amphibians, is the oldest tadpole ever found. By Asher Elbein The metamorphosis of a frog from baby to adult is one of nature ...

The tadpole fossil’s throat skeleton was preserved, showing it had the same crucial filter-feeding apparatus as its modern counterparts (SN: 9/25/17).