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Amphibians have soft bodies with thin skins, and lack claws, defensive armour, or spines. Nevertheless, they have evolved various defence mechanisms to keep themselves alive. The first line of defence in salamanders and frogs is the mucous secretion that they produce. This keeps their skin moist and makes them slippery and difficult to grip.
Temnospondyli (from Greek τέμνειν, temnein 'to cut' and σπόνδυλος, spondylos 'vertebra') or temnospondyls is a diverse ancient order of small to giant tetrapods—often considered primitive amphibians—that flourished worldwide during the Carboniferous, Permian and Triassic periods, with fossils being found on every continent.
For instance, descendants of the first reptiles include modern reptiles, mammals and birds; the agnathans have given rise to the jawed vertebrates; the bony fishes have given rise to the land vertebrates; a group of amphibians, the labyrinthodonts, have given rise to the reptiles (traditionally including the mammal-like synapsids), which in ...
Scientists found that members of the new species are smaller than their offshore common bottlenose counterparts, eat different fish and have spines adapted to navigating the tight spaces of rivers ...
Amphibamus is a genus of amphibamid temnospondyl amphibians from the Carboniferous (middle Pennsylvanian) of North America. [1] [2] [3] This animal is considered to have been close to the ancestry of modern amphibians. Its length was about 20 centimetres (7.9 in). [4]
The amphiuma's predatory behaviors and food selection are very calculated and variable depending on abundance of food. In addition to eating frogs, snakes, fish, crustaceans, insects, and other amphiuma, amphiuma have been found to eat annelids, vegetables, arachnids, mollusca, and larvae. [12] Amphiuma seem to have a preference for eating ...
Many vertebrates are limbless, limb-reduced, or apodous, with a body plan consisting of a head and vertebral column, but no adjoining limbs such as legs or fins. Jawless fish are limbless but may have preceded the evolution of vertebrate limbs, whereas numerous reptile and amphibian lineages – and some eels and eel-like fish – independently lost their limbs.
All living amphibians belong to the group Lissamphibia. They inhabit a wide variety of habitats, with most species living within terrestrial, fossorial, arboreal or freshwater aquatic ecosystems. Thus amphibians typically start out as larvae living in water, but some species have developed behavioural adaptations to bypass this.