It is one of the strangest phenomena reported. Something that can’t happen, but stories saying
it does turn up again and again anyway. Stories of animals found alive locked deep within stone
or wood, with no observable way they could have entered. This is the mystery of entombed animals.
There are many documented cases of toads, frogs and other small animals inexplicably found encased
within solid rock. These amphibious enigmas are one of the most perplexing mysteries of geology.
Here are some of those cases: Toad in a Stone.
In 1761, Ambroise Pare, physician to Henry III of France, related the
following account to the Annual Register: "Being at my seat near the village of Meudon,
and overlooking a quarryman whom I had sent to break some very large and hard stones,
in the middle of one we found a huge toad, full of life and without any
visible aperture by which it could get there. The laborer told me it was not
the first time he had met with a toad and the like creatures within huge blocks of stone."
Toad in Limestone. In 1865, the Hartlepool Free Press reported
that excavators working on a block of magnesium limestone taken from about 25 feet underground
near Hartlepool, England, discovered a cavity within the stone that contained a live toad.
"The cavity was no larger than its body and presented the appearance of being a cast of it.
The toad's eyes shone with unusual brilliancy, and it was full of vivacity on its liberation.
It appeared, when first discovered, desirous to perform the process of respiration,
but evidently experienced some difficulty, and the only sign of success consisted of
a 'barking' noise, which it continues to make invariably at present on being touched.
The toad is in the possession of Mr. S. Horner, the president of the Natural History Society,
and continues in as lively a state as when found. On a minute examination of its mouth is found to
be completely closed, and the barking noise it makes proceeds from its nostrils. The claws of its
fore feet are turned inwards, and its hind ones are of extraordinary length and unlike the present
English toad. The toad, when first released, was of a pale colour and not readily distinguished
from the stone, but shortly after its colour grew darker until it became a fine olive brown."
Toad in a Boulder. Around the same time, an article
in Scientific American related how a silver miner named Moses Gaines found a toad inside a two-foot
diameter boulder. The article stated that the toad was "three inches long and very plump and fat.
Its eyes were about the size of a silver cent piece, being much larger than those of toads of
the same size as we see every day. They tried to make him hop or jump by touching him with a stick,
but he paid no attention." A later article in Scientific American said: "Many well-authenticated
stories of the finding of live toads and frogs in solid rock are on record."
Toad in an Elm Tree. The French Academy of Sciences
published an account in a 1719 edition of it Memories of the felling of a large elm tree.
In the exact center of the trunk, about four feet above the root was found "a live toad,
middle-sized but lean and filling up the whole vacant space."
68 Toads in a Tree. The Uitenhage Times of
South Africa in 1876 printed the experience of timbermen who were cutting a tree into planks
when deep inside of it a hole was found containing 68 small toads, each about the size of a grape.
"They were of a light brown, almost yellow color, and perfectly healthy,
hopping about and away as if nothing had happened. All about them was solid yellow wood,
with nothing to indicate how they could have got there, how long they had been there, or how they
could have lived without food, drink, or air." Odder still, it is not just natural stone and
trees in which these impossibles occur. Toad in a Plaster Wall.
When a castle wall was being demolished in September 1770, a live toad was plucked from
the solid plaster. That wall had stood undisturbed for more than 40 years.
Frogs in a Concrete Floor. Renowned biologist Julian Huxley received
a letter from a gas fitter in Devonshire, England, who had broken up some concrete
flooring to install some pipe extensions: "My mate was at work with a sledgehammer
when he dropped it suddenly and said, 'That looks like a frog's leg.' We both bent down
and there was the frog. [The] sledge was set aside and I cut the rest of the block carefully.
We released 23 perfectly formed but minute frogs which all hopped away to the flower garden."
lizard imbedded in the stone. Toads aren’t the only subject of these stories.
An 1821 edition of Tilloch’s Philosophical Magazine reported a stone mason named David
Virture discovered a “lizard imbedded in the stone. It was about an inch and a quarter long,
of a brownish-yellow color, and had a round head, with bright sparkling projecting eyes.
It was apparently dead, but after being about five minutes exposed to the air it showed signs
of life.” The rock the lizard had been found within had been some 22 feet underground.
“It was coiled up in a round cavity of its own form, being an exact impression of the
animal,” the article continues, “This stone is naturally a little damp; and about half an
inch around the lizard was soft sand, the same color as the animal…The stone had no fissure,
was quite hard, and one of the best to be got from the quarry of Cullaloe…”
Toad and Lizard in Solid Rock. Sometimes two different types of
animals have been found together as the account from a World War II British soldier reported in
Jerome Clark’s book Unexplained shows: In Algeria in the early part of 1943,
I was working with a team whose job it was to quarry stone that was then used for making roads
and filling bomb craters…One morning, we had set off the charges as usual and I started to prise
away the rock from the quarry face when I saw in a pocket in the rock a large toad, and beside it a
lizard at least nine inches long. Both these animals were alive, and the amazing thing was
that the cavity they were in was at least 20 feet from the top of the quarry face. Try as we might,
we couldn’t find how it was possible for the two creatures to be where they were – there were no
inlets, cracks or fissures leading to the cavity… Turtle in Concrete.
In 1976, a Fort Worth, Texas construction crew was breaking up some concrete they had set just
a year before. Within the broken concrete, a living green turtle was found in an air pocket
that matched the shape of the creature's body. If it had somehow got in when the concrete was
poured a year earlier, how did it survive over that time? Ironically, the poor turtle died a
few days after its release. There are no easy explanations for these incredible anecdotes.
Those who found the creatures nearly always state that there was no discernable way - no small hole,
crack, or fissure - by which they could have gotten into these pockets inside the rock.
And the pockets are always about the exact size of the animals within - some
even bearing an impression of the animal, as if the rock had been cast around it.
Even if a fertilized egg of a toad or frog had somehow seeped into the rock cavity, what did
it live on? What did it eat, drink and breathe to grow, in some cases, to full size? Being unable to
move inside the rock, how did its muscles develop so that it could hop away upon being released?
Geologists tell us that rock is formed over thousands of years. How old are these animals?
The most incredible of such anecdotes was recorded in 1856 in France.
Workmen laboring in a tunnel for a railway line were cutting through Jurassic limestone
when a large creature stumbled out from inside it. It fluttered its wings, made
a croaking noise and dropped dead. According to the workers, the creature had a 10-foot wingspan,
four legs joined by a membrane, black leathery skin, talons for feet, and a
toothed mouth. A local student of paleontology identified the animal as a pterodactyl!
Such a phenomenon seems to make a mockery of both reason and everyday experience.
How on earth could an amphibian grow to maturity and live encapsulated within a lump of rock?
Commonsense tells us two things: first that frogs and toads can't develop from inanimate stone,
and second that they can't beam Star Trek-like through solid matter and materialize inside it.
The discovery of an incarcerated amphibian mightn't seem like a matter of huge importance.
When all's said and done, a stone is just a stone, and a frog is just a frog.
But for living frog to be found sealed inside a stone is more than a little puzzling:
it's disquieting and potentially sensational, because it hints at the
possibility there may be something in the world that lies beyond our comprehension.
And then other questions spring to mind. Is our ignorance of this phenomenon merely personal,
or is it shared by society as a whole? And if no one has a satisfactory explanation,
can we be sure that such an explanation, in terms of known causes and effects, can even be found?
A frog in a stone doesn't seem much. But as long as it remains inexplicable it is a threat, however
small, to the conception of the universe as a coherent and well-ordered place.