A frog thought to be extinct is not - it's alive and well in Israel. The Hula frog was thought to have gone the way of the dodo (literally) into extinction...but it's now been declared a "living fossil".

Genetic testing shows that the white-speckled Hula painted frog belongs to a group of amphibians that were thought to have died out 15,000 years ago.

The frog was officially listed as extinct in 1996 but wasn't seen for several decades before that. During the 1950s, the draining of Lake Hula, the painted frog's sole surviving natural habitat in Israel, was thought to have caused the extinction of the Hula painted frog. Even before dying off, only three adults were ever seen prior to the species being declared extinct.

But a female specimen was spotted in November 2011. And genetic analysis confirmed that it belongs to the Latonia group of amphibians.

The Latonia group was widespread throughout Europe, but died out about 15,000 years ago. So not only is the Hula frog a species that is no longer extinct, it's the survivor of a huge group of species thought to have died off long ago. This is very exciting news for researchers. The Lationia group of frogs is known only from fossils, so the frog was dubbed a "living fossil".

"We felt like we had a great finding when we first rediscovered it - this (frog) was like an idol in Israel," professor Sarig Gafny, of the Ruppin Academic Center, in Israel, told press.

"But then we found it was a living fossil: this was amazing."

Hula frogs may be coming back-despite only three being seen pre-extinction, since the 2011 re-discovery, another 13 specimens have been documented.

A research paper on the living fossil frog was published in the journal Nature. In the paper's abstract, the authors write, "The survival of this living fossil is a striking example of resilience to severe habitat degradation during the past century by an amphibian."