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Caecilians have small or absent eyes, with only a single known class of photoreceptors, and their vision is limited to dark-light perception. [17] [18] Unlike other modern amphibians (frogs and salamanders) the skull is compact and solid, with few large openings between plate-like cranial bones. The snout is pointed and bullet-shaped, used to ...
Molecular studies of extant amphibians based on multiple-locus data favor one or the other of the monophyletic alternatives and indicate a Late Carboniferous date for the divergence of the lineage leading to caecilians from the one leading to frogs and salamanders, and an early Permian date for the separation of the frog and salamander groups.
The three modern orders are Anura (the frogs), Caudata (or Urodela, the salamanders), and Gymnophiona (or Apoda, the caecilians). [14] It has been suggested that salamanders arose separately from a temnospondyl-like ancestor, and even that caecilians are the sister group of the advanced reptiliomorph amphibians, and thus of amniotes. [ 15 ]
The origins and evolutionary relationships between the three main groups of amphibians are hotly debated. A molecular phylogeny based on rDNA analysis dating from 2005 suggests that salamanders and caecilians are more closely related to each other than they are to frogs, and the divergence of the three groups took place in the Paleozoic or early Mesozoic before the breakup of the ...
Amphibians use their skin as a secondary respiratory interface and some small terrestrial salamanders and frogs lack lungs and rely entirely on their skin. They are superficially similar to reptiles like lizards , but unlike reptiles and other amniotes , require access to water bodies to breed.
It belongs to a lineage believed to have given rise to the three living branches of amphibians - frogs, salamanders and limbless caecilians. While only the skull - measuring around 1.2 inches (3 ...
Blue poison dart frog. Herpetology (from Greek ἑρπετόν herpetón, meaning "reptile" or "creeping animal") is a branch of zoology concerned with the study of amphibians (including frogs, salamanders, and caecilians (Gymnophiona)) and reptiles (including snakes, lizards, turtles, crocodilians, and tuataras).
The discovery of the new amphibian species could provide some answers to how frogs and salamanders evolved to get their special characteristics today, the authors wrote in the paper.