NEWS

26 October 2026

The creature’s armour cladding probably enabled it to tolerate the salty seas of the Late Triassic.

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Sarah Wild Sarah Wild is a freelance journalist in Canterbury, UK.

A newly discovered amphibian species called Gerrothorax maritimus was about 74 centimetres long and had a flattened, armoured body armour. Credit: Ryosuke Motani

Amphibians were able to live in the sea 237 million years ago, according to research published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution 1 .

Two fossils of a type of primitive amphibian from a group called temnospondyls were found in what is now Guizhou province in China — which would have been a salty sea during the Late Triassic period. The researchers have provisionally named the species Gerrothorax maritimus. The 74-centimetre-long creatures had flattened bodies and were almost completely covered by body armour.

There are more than 8,000 species of modern amphibians, but none of them lives exclusively in a marine environment.…