Project Lazarus
De-extinction, gastric brooding frogs and Project Lazarus
The southern gastric brooding frog was discovered in 1972 and properly described in 1981. Intense interest followed and in the same year it had disappeared in the wild, shortly followed by the last captive specimen's death in 1983. A second species, the northern gastric brooding frog, was discovered before disappearing too. They were known to science for just over a decade before their extinction.
The interest was primarily due to the frog's unusual reproductive method. The female swallows her eggs and turns her stomach into a womb, vomiting up her young when they are grown. The loss of her stomach means she doesn't eat while they develop, and her new womb bloats so much it causes her lungs to collapse (meaning she has to breathe through her skin). To date, it's the only organism known to completely change one organ into another.
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