New early Oligocene water frog (Anura: Ranidae: Pelophylax) occurrence from southeastern France

2026 · doi:10.3897/arphapreprints.e189105
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Abstract

The widespread frog family Ranidae first appears in the European fossil record during the early Oligocene. Here we describe MAB19654, a near-complete and articulated male ranid frog skeleton from the early Oligocene Marnes du Bois d’Asson of southeastern France. The assignment of Ranidae is based on the presence of elongate posterior apophyses, cylindrical sacral apophyses and non-imbricated vertebrae. The assignment of Pelophylax is based on the robust humerus bearing a low crista medialis that does not reach midshaft. Additionally, we take measurements of limb bone ratios and sacral angulation of various extant osteological and fossil Pelophylax specimens for comparisons, and document morphological variation in the apophysis of V4. Our sample includes 58 P. ridibundus, 59 P. lessonae, 89 P. perezi, and one fossil P. aquensis , supplemented with the literature. We find that MAB19654 most closely resembles P. ridibundus in terms of limb bone proportions and sacral angulation. The tarsus reduces relative to the femur in P. perezi , while P. lessonae evolves a more elongate femur and narrower sacral angulation with respect to MAB19654. Interestingly, we find simple parallel V4 apophyses in ridibundus + lessonae , while complex shapes, as in MAB19654, are prevalent in the early-branching P. perezi . This suggests V4 morphology was complex in early Pelophylax and tentatively proves useful for species determination.
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Preprint ARPHA Preprints https://doi.org/10.3897/arphapreprints.e189105 (19 Feb 2026) https://doi.org/10.3897/arphapreprints.e189105 (19 Feb 2026) Published in: Fossil Record https://doi.org/10.3897/fr.29.188906 Other versions: - Preprint InfoPreprint Info - CiteCite - MetricsMetrics - CommentComment - RelatedRelated - CitedCited ARPHA Preprints doi: 10.3897/arphapreprints.e189105 First posted 19 Feb 2026 Authors Jasper Ponstein - Corresponding author Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, Germany Het Nationaal Oertijdmuseum, Boxtel, Netherlands Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social (IPHES-CERCA), Tarragona, Spain Departament d’Història I Història de l’Art, Universitat Rovira I Virgili, Tarragona, Spain Laan van Avegoor 15, 6955 BD, Ellecom, Netherlands Het Nationaal Oertijdmuseum, Boxtel, Netherlands Department of Earth Sciences, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands Conflict of interest The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Supporting agencies The research of H-AB is funded by projects PID2021-122533NB-I00 and PID2024-157622NB-I00 from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/FEDER ‘Una manera de hacer Europa’), by project GAČR 21-33751S of the Czech Science Foundation, and by the CERCA Program/Generalitat de Catalunya. H-AB belongs to the Consolidated Research Group ‘Paleoecology of Pliocene and Pleistocene and Human Dispersals (Pal-Hum)’, funded by projects 2021SGR-1238 (AGAUR-Generalitat de Catalunya) and 2023PFR-URV-01238 (URV). The IPHES-CERCA has received financial support through the “María de Maeztu” program for Units of Excellence (CEX2024-01485-M/funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033). This is an open access preprint distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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