Earliest example of a rapid-fire tongue found in extinct amphibians

Fossils of small armoured amphibians provide the oldest evidence of a slingshot-style tongue, according to a new study co-led by a UCL researcher. The research team analysed 99-million-year-old fossils to find that the animals were sit-and-wait predators that snatched prey with a projectile firing of their tongue, as reported in the journal Science . Despite having lizard like claws, scales and tails, the ancient animals, knowns as albanerpetontids, were amphibians, not reptiles. Their lineage was distinct from today's frogs, salamanders and caecilians and dates back at least 165 million years, dying out only about 2 million years ago. The new findings redefine how these tiny animals are believed to have fed, as they were previously thought to be underground burrowers. The fossils are the first albanerpetontids discovered in modern-day Myanmar and the only known examples in amber. Most albanerpetontid fossils are in poor condition, yet one specimen was in 'mint condition', say the researchers, enabled them to thoroughly investigate it.