Hundreds of frogs drowned during mating, turned into fossils 45 million years later and were watched, can they be embarrassed again?
Introduction: Fossils believe that they are not unfamiliar to everyone, and we can see many very well-preserved dinosaur fossils in many dinosaur museums. There are even some replicas of other fossils, such as grasshoppers, embedded in the stone, but generally only the bones of animals can be seen. It is not possible to see the behavior of the animals at that time, but the fossil seals introduced to you today are the fossils of frogs when they mate, which can be said to be very precious.
Before introducing the fossils of these two frogs when mating, let us briefly introduce how the fossils are formed. Fossils that serve as one of the important ways in which paleontologists study ancient organisms. The formation of fossils actually has many factors and conditions.
First of all, the fossil formation must be a relatively hard part of the animal's body, such as bones, teeth, cuticles, and so on. Only these harder parts of the body can be the first element conducive to the formation of fossils, even very fragile, even very young creatures, even small grasshoppers, etc., because of its harder shell also retains a lot of fossils.
The second is to have integrity, and the integrity of the animal's body parts must be guaranteed when it dies. If it is already a fragmented body part or a whole before the fossil is formed, it is difficult to form a fossil and preserve it to this day.
Then there is the fact that after the creature dies, it must be in a specific environment, such as it must be buried deep underground. If it is left on the surface, it may disappear without a trace over time, and it may eventually disappear without a trace, and it will be decomposed into natural nutrients and even sand debris.
Those buried deep in the ground do not necessarily become fossils, they also need to remain deeper underground with the continuous movement of the earth's crust. In these processes, some fossils may be destroyed with the movement of the geology, so the location of fossil formation is also very important. Finally, in the process of becoming a rock, it was finally petrified and preserved to our present day. And these are the basic conditions for fossils to be preserved.
The fossils of these frog mating are actually from the German region, and scientists have found this fossil in the swamps of Germany. After the researchers' detection, hundreds of frog fossils were found, and there are other species of fossils such as crocodiles, toads and so on. But among these species, frogs managed to attract the attention of researchers because they numbered hundreds and remained intact.
The researchers also selected two intact frog fossils to study, and found that no scars caused by external forces were found on these two frogs, which showed that the frogs did not die from other predators or because of external forces, and also showed that after death, the frogs were not invaded by other scavengers.
The researchers also questioned the cause of the death of this group of frogs, but after investigating multiple frog fossils, the researchers eventually found a strangely shaped fossil. The frogs in this fossil are a pair. They overlapped each other on top of the same fossil, and the scientists found that it was a pair of frogs in a mating state. It also means that during the process of frog mating, a considerable number of female frogs will die because they are held by male frogs and pressed into the water.
Although amphibians, but frogs are not completely aquatic organisms, they still need to go to the surface of the water for ventilation and breathing, but the mating time is too long, and the male frog has been pressing the female frog into the water, which will cause the female frog to drown during the breeding process, so the researchers determined that the origin of these hundreds of frog fossils may be frogs that were pressed into the water during mating
It is also interesting to say that it is embarrassing that these frogs were discovered tens of millions of years after death, and they still retained their mating posture before they died. Coincidentally, in 2011, a fossil of amber mated by a fly was unearthed. Compared with traditional fossils, amber fossils are more intuitive and three-dimensional and more rare. The pair of flies is completely untended, completely frozen in the amber fossil, until tens of millions of years later can let us intuitively see the original appearance of animal life tens of millions of years ago, it can be said that it is very magical.
Summary: But after all, it is also a minority, and most of the fossils are well preserved and are already very rare. And this kind of fossil that can preserve the original behavior of animals is even more precious. Finally, I hope to find more ancient fossils, which can better restore the ancient biological state.