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The men seem to push the women under the water while they are standing on top during the act.
For decades, scientists have been puzzled by a mystery: What killed hundreds of fossilized frogs found in a death trap in Germany dating back perhaps millions of years?
These frogs appeared to be perfectly healthy when they died, so researchers have recently determined that they may have drowned during the ‘passionate’ act of mating in the water.
In the study they analyzed 168 frog fossils found near an old mine in the Geiseltal valley in the German region of Saxony-Anhalt. The specimens were originally collected in the 1930s to 1950s, along with many other fossils found there. About half of these were vertebrates and included the forerunners of horses, crocodiles, giant snakes and flightless birds.
While fossilized frog bones date back to about 45 million years ago, according to researchers, when swampy areas covered almost all of present-day Germany.
Analysis of the bones showed that the frogs had not been killed by predators or disease, so by process of elimination they concluded that the cause of death was mating, as males of the species are known to hold the female below them in the water during mating, which causes them to drown. .
Other paleontologists have proposed that the deaths came from extreme environmental conditions or drought.
However, the researchers were unable to determine the gender of the dead frogs from their bones and consequently could not determine whether they were all female, so the hypothesis cannot be fully proven.
A mystery that arises from this may be: After millions of years of evolution, why do female frogs still die during sex? For species that still reproduce in this way, the advantages must surely outweigh the costs, although it is not clear how.
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