Odontobatrachus

Odontobatrachus is a genus of frogs comprising the family Odontobatrachidae. In a 2014 research project Barej, Rödel, Loader & Schmitz separated the genus from the established genus Petropedetes and separated the new family from the established family Petropedetidae.

==Taxonomy and affinities== The species had originally been assigned to the genus Petropedetes in the Petropedetidae, a family of so-called torrent frogs of Africa, so the type species is Petropedetes natator Boulenger, 1905. However, recent morphological and genomic investigation showed the species not only to be cladistically alien to the Petropedetidae, but to all other existing anuran families as well. Furthermore, the family Odontobatrachidae turned out to be fairly ancient, estimated to have originated in the mid-Cretaceous period, some 80 Ma – 90 Ma ago. Consequently, a new family and genus were assigned, respectively Odontobatrachidae and Odontobatrachus. The details of the evolutionary history of the taxon however, still are open to alternative lines of interpretation.