''Saltenia'' is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

frog A frog is any member of a diverse and largely semiaquatic group of short-bodied, tailless amphibian vertebrates composing the order (biology), order Anura (coming from the Ancient Greek , literally 'without tail'). Frog species with rough ski ...

s. It was assigned to the family

Pipidae The Pipidae are a family (biology), family of primitive, tongueless frogs. There are 41 species in the family, found in tropical South America (genus ''Pipa'') and sub-Saharan Africa (the three other genera). Description Pipid frogs are highly ...

by R. L. Carroll in 1988 and again in 2005 by A. M. Báez and T. Harrison. The single described species, ''Saltenia ibanezi'', is thought to have lived in South America in the

Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the more recent of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''cre ...

. Its closest living relative are the frogs in the genus ''

Silurana ''Silurana'' is a subgenus of frogs in the family Pipidae. They are closely related the clawed frog subgenus, ''Xenopus ''Xenopus'' () (Gk., ξενος, ''xenos'' = strange, πους, ''pous'' = foot, commonly known as the ...

''. Fossils of ''Saltenia'' have been found in the

Campanian The Campanian is the fifth of six ages of the Late Cretaceous epoch on the geologic timescale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). In chronostratigraphy, it is the fifth of six stages in the Upper Cretaceous Series. Campa ...

Las Curtiembres Formation of Argentina.''Saltenia''
at

Fossilworks Fossilworks was a portal which provides query, download, and analysis tools to facilitate access to the Paleobiology Database, a large relational database assembled by hundreds of paleontologists from around the world. History Fossilworks was cr ...

.org

References

† Late Cretaceous amphibians Campanian life Cretaceous amphibians of South America Cretaceous Argentina Fossils of Argentina Fossil taxa described in 1959 {{pipidae-stub