In Prehistoric Planet, one of the most memorable scenes sees a small Masiakasaurus gaily frolicking by the waterside when BAM – it’s snapped up in the jaws of an enormous predatory amphibian. The beast in question is Beelzebufo, a giant dinosaur-eating frog that once lived in what we now know as Madagascar.

How big was beelzebufo?

It was described in 2008 based on a collection of fossils that indicated a body size big enough to earn the scientific name Beelzebufo ampinga. It's derived from the Greek Beelzebub which means "devil," and the Latin for toad, bufo, while ampinga is a hat-tip to its armored head.

It grew to around 41 centimeters (16 inches) long and weighed more than a human baby. If you’re struggling to create a mental image based on that description, Professor Susan Evans of UCL Biosciences put it in terms we can all understand on UCL's website: "This frog, a relative of today's Horned toads, would have been the size of a slightly squashed beach-ball, with short legs and a big mouth."

Stunning.

Known to some as the “devil frog,” it’s thought that Beelzebufo may well have been the largest frogs our planet has ever seen back when they lived around 65 to 70 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous. That window of time puts them on the planet at the same time as a diverse host of dinosaurs – good news for a frog that may have eaten them for breakfast.

What did Beelzebufo eat?

The handy thing about having living relatives of extinct giants is that you can look to their behaviors for some idea of how they may have lived. In the case of horned frogs, it paints a grisly picture.

“If it shared the aggressive temperament and 'sit-and-wait' ambush tactics of living Horned toads, it would have been a formidable predator on small animals,” continued Evans. “Its diet would most likely have consisted of insects and small vertebrates like lizards, but it's not impossible that Beelzebufo might even have munched on hatchling or juvenile dinosaurs."

This idea was tested in an intriguing study into the biteforce of Beelzebufo that used their horned toad relatives as a model, by getting the species Ceratophrys cranwelli to chomp down on a bar. By comparing the strength and jaw morphology of these frogs to what we know about Beelzebufo’s measurements, the study concluded that they could well have had some sizable prey on the menu.

“Given that prey size is known to increase with body size in a variety of tetrapods, and that Beelzebufo clearly had the ability to bite with considerable force, large individuals would have been able to prey upon a variety of contemporaneous taxa, including small/juvenile crocodiles and non-avian dinosaurs,” concluded the authors.

Imagine being a predatory therapod and losing your young to an angry beach ball. Devastating and humiliating.