- One of the greatest Warner Bros. cartoons of all time
is the one about the singing frog. A construction worker, demolishing an
old building, finds a time capsule in the cornerstone, out of which leaps
a grinning green frog which commences to dance and sing old show tunes.
The construction worker believes the amazing find will make his fortune.
He quits his job and opens a theatre starring his talented amphibian, but
when the curtain is raised, the frog just sits and croaks.
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- The construction worker never questions how the frog
was able to sing, nor even how it managed to survive so long in an airtight
time capsule without food or water. But then, this is just a cartoon, right?
Nothing to do with reality.
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- You think so? In fact, there are many documented cases
of toads, frogs, and other small animals inexplicably found encased within
solid rock -- alive! Granted, they do not sing, but these amphibious enigmas
are one of the most perplexing mysteries of geology. Here are some of those
cases:
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- * In 1761, Ambroise Pare, physician to Henry III of France,
related the following account to the Annual Register: "Being at my
seat near the village of Meudon, and overlooking a quarryman whom I had
sent to break some very large and hard stones, in the middle of one we
found a huge toad, full of life and without any visible aperture by which
it could get there. The laborer told me it was not the first time he had
met with a toad and the like creatures within huge blocks of stone."
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- "The cavity was no larger than its body, and presented
the appearance of being a cast of it. The toad's eyes shone with unusual
brilliancy, and it was full of vivacity on its liberation."
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- * In 1865, the Hartlepool Free Press reported that excavators
working on a block of magnesium limestone taken from about 25 feet underground
near Hartlepool, England, discovered a cavity within the stone that contained
a live toad. "The cavity was no larger than its body, and presented
the appearance of being a cast of it. The toad's eyes shone with unusual
brilliancy, and it was full of vivacity on its liberation. It appeared,
when first discovered, desirous to perform the process of respiration,
but evidently experienced some difficulty, and the only sign of success
consisted of a 'barking' noise, which it continues to make invariably at
present on being touched. The toad is in the possession of Mr. S. Horner,
the president of the Natural History Society, and continues in as lively
a state as when found. On a minute examination of its mouth is found to
be completely closed, and the barking noise it makes proceeds from its
nostrils. The claws of its fore feet are turned inwards, and its hind ones
are of extraordinary length and unlike the present English toad. The toad,
when first released, was of a pale colour and not readily distinguished
from the stone, but shortly after its colour grew darker until it became
a fine olive brown."
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- * Around the same time, an article in Scientific American
related how a silver miner named Moses Gaines found a toad inside a two-foot
diameter boulder. The article stated that the toad was "three inches
long and very plump and fat. Its eyes were about the size of a silver cent
piece, being much larger than those of toads of the same size as we see
every day. They tried to make him hop or jump by touching him with a stick,
but he paid no attention." A later article in Scientific American
said: "Many well authenticated stories of the finding of live toads
and frogs in solid rock are on record."
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- * The Uitenhage Times of South Africa in 1876 printed
the experience of timbermen who were cutting a tree into planks, when deep
inside of it a hole was found containing 68 small toads, each about the
size of a grape. "They were of a light brown, almost yellow color,
and perfectly healthy, hopping about and away as if nothing had happened.
All about them was solid yellow wood, with nothing to indicate how they
could have got there, how long they had been there, or how they could have
lived without food, drink, or air."
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- * Renowned biologist Julian Huxley received a letter
from a gas fitter in Devonshire, England, who had broken up some concrete
flooring to install some pipe extensions: "My mate was at work with
a sledge hammer when he dropped it suddenly and said, 'That looks like
a frog's leg.' We both bent down and there was the frog. [The] sledge was
set aside and I cut the rest of the block carefully. We released 23 perfectly
formed but minute frogs which all hopped away to the flower garden."
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- * In 1821, Tilloch's Philosophical Magazine wrote how
David Virtue, a stone mason, was working on a large chunk of rock that
had come from about 22 feet below the surface when "he found a lizard
embedded in the stone. It was coiled up in a round cavity of its own form,
being an exact impression of the animal. It was about an inch and a quarter
long, of a brownish yellow color, and had a round head, with bright sparkling
projecting eyes. It was apparently dead, but after being about five minutes
exposed to the air it showed signs of life. It soon ran about with much
celerity."
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- There are no easy explanations for these incredible anecdotes.
Those who found the creatures nearly always state that there was no discernable
way -- no small hole, crack, or fissure -- by which they could have gotten
into these pockets inside the rock. And the pockets are always about the
exact size of the animals within -- some even bearing an impression of
the animal, as if the rock had been cast around it. Even if a fertilized
egg of a toad or frog had somehow seeped into the rock cavity, what did
it live on? What did it eat, drink, and breathe to grow, in some cases,
to full size? Being unable to move inside the rock, how did its muscles
develop so that it could hop away upon being released? Geologists tell
us that rock is formed over thousands of years. How old are these animals?
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- The most incredible of such anecdotes was recorded in
1856 in France. Workmen laboring in a tunnel for a railway line were cutting
through Jurassic limestone when a large creature stumbled out from inside
it. It fluttered its wings, made a croaking noise, and dropped dead. According
to the workers, the creature had a 10-foot wingspan, four legs joined by
a membrane, black leathery skin, talons for feet, and a toothed mouth.
A local student of paleontology identified the animal as a pterodactyl.
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