Wildlife at the Watering Hole - April 2025 - Dr Roy Farman

Fossil frogs down under: Unearthing Australia's hopping history

Dr Roy Farman

Frogs are an incredibly diverse group of amphibians, with a body plan unlike any other vertebrate. When it comes to studying fossil frogs, one bone stands out as the most useful for identification—the ilium, a part of the hip. In Australia, every fossil frog discovered so far has been identified from this single bone!

My research focused on understanding the shape and variation of these ilia to help classify Australia’s ancient frogs. I used high-resolution 3D scans and shape analysis techniques to compare fossils from two important sites: Murgon (around 55 million years old) and Riversleigh (ranging from about 25 million to just a few thousand years old). Through this, I was able to:

One of the key findings was that a group of frogs called Philoria gradually shifted their range southeast over time, likely due to environmental changes. By studying these ancient frogs, we can better understand how Australia’s frog species have responded to past climate shifts—knowledge that could help us protect today’s frogs from ongoing environmental threats.

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Roy is a Research Officer at The Australian National University (ANU) and Adjunct Associate Lecturer at The University of New South Wales (UNSW). He started his career with a Bachelor of Science majoring in Palaeobiology and Museum Studies at Macquarie University. Then he completed his Masters of Scientific Studies at the University of New England, supervised by Dr. Phil Bell on Australia’s Earliest Tetrapod swimming footprints from Berowra. After that, he completed a PhD supervised by Profs Mike Archer and Suzanne J. Hand, focussing on Australia’s most forgotten vertebrates, frogs! Unravelling their fossil record from the early Eocene (~55 Ma) to present and using novel methods such as Micro-CT scans and three-dimensional geometric morphometrics. Now working at ANU, he is working on mammalian cranial development with Assoc. Profs. Laura Wilson and Daisuke Koyabu. He will soon be leaving Australia to work on fossil caudates (Salamanders and Newts) of Spain as a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow.