Nevo’s work as a student in the 1950s was marked by geological mapping of the Israeli Negev desert and discoveries of ore (kaolin, copper, iron). He established one of the world’s largest collections of fossil frogs from the Early Cretaceous and published it in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University as his Ph.D. dissertation, describing two new genera and three species and highlighting some basic aspects of frog origins, phylogeny, and evolution. These paleontological studies culminated in discovering Early Cretaceous
salamander fossils involving a new genus and species of the Negev desert and pipid tadpoles representing a new genus and species from the Early Cretaceous of Samaria.
