arry Serpa, a Nature Conservancy biologist, turned over 1,000 rocks in the Garcia River Forest before finding two coastal specimens, a male with a tail and a tadpole, in 2009.

He was looking because The Nature Conservancy has been working to restore the forest ecosystem along with The Conservation Fund, which helped purchase the land in 2004. To date, Serpa found more than a dozen other tailed frogs and tadpoles.

The coastal tailed frog is one of only 5,000 species of frogs in the world that uses a cloaca. Other frogs fertilize eggs after they've been laid by the female, like salmon.