NEW DELHI — Since before the age of dinosaurs, it has burrowed unbothered beneath the monsoon-soaked soils of remote northeast India — unknown to science and mistaken by villagers as a deadly miniature snake.
But this legless amphibian’s time in obscurity has ended, thanks to an intrepid team of biologists led by University of Delhi professor Sathyabhama Das Biju. Over five years of digging through forest beds in the rain, the team has identified an entirely new family of amphibians — called chikilidae — endemic to the region but with ancient links to Africa.
Their discovery, published today in a journal of the Royal Society of London, gives yet more evidence that India is a hotbed of amphibian life with habitats worth protecting against the country’s industry-heavy development agenda. It also gives exciting new evidence in the study of prehistoric-species migration, as well as evolutionary paths influenced by continental shift.
The chikilidae is a caecilian, the most primitive of three amphibian groups that also include frogs and salamanders. They grow to about 4 inches and can ram their hard skulls through some of the region’s tougher soils.
