Dustin thinks Dart was of the Indirana genus, but the genus wasn't formally described until 1986 and frogs develop rear legs first.
For those of you who watch the Netflix original drama "Stranger Things," and have seen Chapter Three: The Pollywog, then you got a glimpse of Dart, short for D’Artagnan of Three Musketeers fame. But it isn’t Dart who matters so much for us herp lovers as it is for the reference that Dustin uses in trying to identify the creature.
Dustin breaks out a field guide to reptiles and amphibians and points to Indirana semipalmata as the species of frog that Dart could be. That is until Dart eats his cat.
The problem though is the series takes place in 1984 and Indirana wasn’t formally named as a genus until 1986, according to Christian Kammerer, a paleontology curator at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Kammerer, who apparently is a fan of the show, tweeted November 11 that there was a goof up in the timeline.
Stranger Things 2 is supposed to take place in 1984, but it discusses a frog genus (Indirana) that wasn't named until 1986. #unforgivable #GOOFS #tookmerightoutofit
— Christian Kammerer (@Synapsida) November 11, 2017
“This one, I think, may be the most nitpick-y and pedantic comment about anachronisms that has been made thus far,” Kammerer told The Verge. “It probably helps that I spent a lot of time growing up in the 1980s reading field guides to reptiles and amphibians.”
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Indirana semipalmata is a frog native to the Western Ghats region of India, and grown to about 1.4 inches in length. They lay their eggs on moist rocks and tree bark, giving the plausibility that Dart, surviving out of water, could have resembled such a tadpole, but that is where the similarities end for The Pollywog.
