The golden toad was last seen in 1989 in the Costa Rican cloud forest of Monteverde--and 5 years later, its disappearance was the first extinction to be blamed on humanmade global warming. New evidence, however, suggests that humans may not have been at fault after all.
Here's the current line on what drove the golden toad extinct. As humans pumped carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, Costa Rican rainforests became hotter and dryer in the mid-1980s. These conditions made the toad vulnerable to the chytrid fungus, which is thought to thrive in warmer, drier climes. Chytridiomycosis is a fatal skin disease that eventually causes convulsions, skin loss, and death in amphibians. Although amphibian populations all over the region declined, the golden toad`s limited habitat and small population made it especially vulnerable.
But it`s hard to tell if the unusually dry conditions that contributed to the extinction were part of a natural ...