New fossil anurans from the Lower Cretaceous Sasayama Group of Hyogo Prefecture, Western Honshu, Japan

We describe two well-preserved and articulated fossil anurans excavated from the Lower Cretaceous Sasayama Group in Hyogo Prefecture, Western Honshu, Japan, as new taxa on the basis of unique combinations of character states. We performed a phylogenetic analysis that included these new taxa, as well as Mesozoic and archaic anurans. This analysis strongly supports the monophyly of each of the two new taxa, both of which are placed in more derived positions than extant leiopelmatids or Liaobatrachus from the Lower Cretaceous in China. Anuran specimens from the Tetori Group of Japan are not assigned to the two new taxa, suggesting that at least three anuran taxa were present in Japan during the Early Cretaceous. These Japanese representatives are not closely related to known fossil anurans from Eastern Eurasia, unlike recently described Cretaceous lizards from these two regions.