Living entombed animal

[2] References to entombed animals have appeared in the writings of William of Newburgh,[3] J. G. Wood,[4] Ambroise Paré,[5] Robert Plot,[6] André Marie Constant Duméril, John Wesley, and others.

[9] According to the Fortean Times, about 210 entombed animal cases have been described in Europe, North America, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand since the fifteenth century.

[11] In a letter to Julian Huxley, one Eric G. Mackley claimed to have freed 23 frogs from a single piece of concrete while widening a road in Devonshire.

During the 1820s, English geologist William Buckland conducted an experiment to see how long a toad could remain alive while encased in stone.

A few toads that had been in the porous limestone were still living, but the glass had developed cracks which Buckland believed may have admitted small insects.

Buckland concluded that toads could not survive inside rock for extreme lengths of time, and determined that reports of the entombed animal phenomenon were mistaken.

[18] A reference to the phenomenon occurs in Dante Gabriel Rossetti's poem "Jenny", which mentions a "toad within a stone / Seated while time crumbles on".