Archaeologists in England are stumped as to how the shattered amphibian corpses got there, with ideas ranging from death by cold to a disease killer.
Vicki Ewens is a senior archaeozoologist at the Museum of London Archaeology. A number of different factors may have contributed to the frog remains accumulating.
Between 400 B.C. and A.D. 70, bones were found at an ancient settlement in Bar Hill. Archaeologists said in the statement that the ditch where the bones were found is next to a roundhouse and that at least 350 individual frog and toad bones were found there. There is no proof that the toads were eaten by humans.
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The researchers are trying to figure out how the remains got into the ditch. There is a chance that a large number of frog and toads fell into a ditch because they couldn't escape during their breeding season in the spring.
There is a chance that an infectious virus killed these animals. In the 1980s, many frog in the U.K. were affected by a Ranaviruses.
The cold could have killed the salamanders. There is a chance that the beetles and toads that swarmed to the roundhouse attracted the frog and toads that ate them and they died in the ditch.
Many scholars not associated with the research were excited by the discovery.
This is very interesting. The idea that the frog could have fallen into the ditch of the roundhouse during migration is a reasonable one. There is a lot of research and written about salamanders.
Jamie Voyles is an associate professor of biology at the University of Nevada Reno. It can be hard to determine the cause of mass mortality events. I would say that infectious disease is a possibility that could be looked into.
Ahead of a construction project, archaeologists excavated at Bar Hill. Excavations are complete and the artifacts are being analyzed. The Museum of London Archaeology doesn't plan to do a DNA analysis of the frog and toad bones. At the time of publication, Ewens was unable to reply.
It was originally published on Live Science
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