Penny-sized frogs are world's smallest
The frogs are so small they seem to have hit the lower limit of body size for frogs and toads, so it's unlikely that researchers will find anything much smaller.
The two new tiny frogs discovered in New Guinea, the tiniest in the world. The top frogs are examples of P. dekot and the lower two are P. verrucosa.
Fred Kraus, Bishop Museum, Honolulu
Smaller than a penny, two newly discovered frog species are considered the smallest ever found. The pipsqueaks live in Papua New Guinea and run about 0.4 inches (8-to-9 millimeters) in length.
The two species, Paedophrynedekot and Paedophryneverrucosa, are not only the smallest frogs ever discovered, they are also the smallest of a group of animals called tetrapods (four-legged animals with backbones). The duo rounds out the Paedophryne genus, which already contained two other, slightly larger, frog species first described in 2002.
The name P. dekot derives from the word for "very small" in the local language, Daga, noted study researcher Fred Kraus in the Dec. 12 issue of the journal ZooKeys; P. verrucosa was named from the Latin for "full of warts," due to its distinctively lumpy skin.
P. dekot inhabits the lower ranges, below about 4,000 feet (1,200 meters) of the western slope of Mt. Dayman, in Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea, and P. verrucosa lives on the southeastern slope of Mt. Suckling, near a region that joins Mt. Dayman.
