Rare discovery of three new toad species in Nevada's Great Basin

A recently discovered new species of toad, the Dixie Valley toad, was found by a team from the University of Nevada, Reno in a spring-fed marsh in the Great Basin of Nevada, which was once covered by large marshes and giant inland lakes during the Pleistocene Epoch and is now among the most arid regions in the United States with only one percent of the landscape containing water.

Credit: Mike Wolterbeek, University of Nevada, Reno

Three new species of toads have been discovered living in Nevada's Great Basin in an expansive survey of the 190,000 square mile ancient lake bottom. Discoveries of new amphibians are extremely rare in the United States with only three new frog species discovered since 1985 -- and toad species are even more rare, with the last species discovered north of Mexico, the now extinct Wyoming toad, in 1968.

"We've found the toads in small, wet habitats surrounded by high-desert completely cut off from other populations," Dick Tracy, -read more