Newsletterer's Note: Each weekday, I send out a newsletter called The Cipher to Defector Pal-level subscribers, which has a recap of the blog day, links to other sites, and extra takes and bits from staffers. (You can change your newsletter preferences or upgrade your subscription at the My Account page.) Today, we are inexplicably locked out of Sendgrid, so everyone gets a bonus bit from Sabs.
Also, an announcement: Defector Trivia is happening on Twitch today at 5 p.m. ET. I would have put that in the newsletter, too.
-Lauren Theisen
If there’s one thing we all need right now, it’s a big baby. Maybe that’s why they’ve been having a moment: Moo Deng, Pesto, the Rizzler, the Fully Conscious Baby Who Wants To Go To The Four Seasons Orlando. Now, science has served up another large youth in the form of a 161-million-year-old fossilized tadpole, which was recently described in a paper in Nature. This tadpole is the oldest tadpole in the world, at least in terms of when it wriggled around on Earth. And as Asher Elbein beautifully imagines in the New York Times, “this tadpole was long enough to fit in your typical hot dog bun.” Can you imagine that? Drizzle a little ketchup, mustard, relish … BOOM! (Yes, this is a Big Justice slogan, not a Rizzler slogan, but please allow me this.)
Before this big baby frog swam on the scene, scientists knew frogs dated back to 217 million years ago, and the oldest tadpole on record, Shomronella jordanica was just 140 million years old. But in 2020, scientists in Patagonia came across a swath of rock studded with hundreds of fossilized frogs of the species Notobatrachus degiustoi. This find would have been remarkable in its own right, but when the researchers looked closer, they saw a single tadpole etched into the sandstone. It was a big fellow, more than six inches long and already showing parts of its hind legs and forelegs. It was exceptionally preserved, with the dark spot of its eye peering out.
This tadpole had signs of infancy and adulthood, making it the perfect preteen frog. It was actually the size of the rest of the adult frogs, which surprised scientists, as most tadpoles are smaller than the adults of their species. This new fossil confirms that metamorphosis was happening in the ancient ancestors of frogs.
Two things can be true: It’s comforting that the awkwardness of adolescence has been around for hundreds of millions of years, and also when the Rizzler goes to high school, I will feel like the oldest person to have ever walked the Earth.
