Proud to present: Sweden's most heinous animal

摘要

There are some things that countries are proud to be showing off at the international arena and other things not so much. This is the story about the supposedly ugliest animal of Sweden. Whether or not this is true or if we Swedes should be proud of it, I guess is a matter of opinion and taste. Bjuv is a small township and municipality with less than seven thousand inhabitants, situated in the north-western part of Skane, the southernmost province of my native country of Sweden. From the late 1800s onwards it was a thriving mining area where coal was being quarried, and there is still a mining museum that reminds us of those olden heydays. The Triassic-Jurassic sedimentary succession in the area consists of alternating beds of strata deposited in fully marine conditions through deltas, river flats and coastal marshes in which the coal was subsequently formed. A rich fossil flora is known with beautifully preserved cycads, ginkgos, ferns and horsetails. But this is also an area in which a characteristic amphibian has been found. A creature that, in my opinion, has received an undeservedly bad reputation.