Discovered in the Western Ghats Mountains of India, ancestors of this squatty frog walked with dinosaurs. Announced in Nature, this new species has been dubbed Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis, from the Sanskrit word for nose (nasika); batrachus, meaning frog; and Sahyadri, the name for the hills along the western Indian coast that are also called the Western Ghats. "It is not just a new species," reported Franky Bossuyt, an evolutionary biologist at the Free University of Brussels in Belgium. "It represents a deep branch in the evolutionary tree of frogs, and as such merits the establishment of a new family."

Yes, Virginia, there really is a purple frog

The discovery in October of a new species of frog in a remote corner of mountainous India flooded the news wires with scientific excitement. But the announcement of the thought-to-be-extinct, and distinctly purple frog brought smiles to the faces of myriad TCU-ers, who have long known about the existence of Purple Frogs. Of course, our brand isn't really a frog, it's a lizard -- phyronsoma cornutum, to be precise. But still, Horned Frogs everywhere are to be excused for chuckling. After all, it's fun to discover you are more "real" than previously believed.