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Most scientists have concluded that all of the primary groups of modern amphibians—frogs, salamanders and caecilians—are closely related. Some writers have argued that the early Permian dissorophoid Gerobatrachus hottoni is a lissamphibian. [2]
There are more than 220 living species of caecilian classified in 10 families. Gymnophionomorpha is a recently coined name for the corresponding total group which includes Gymnophiona as well as a few extinct stem-group caecilians (extinct amphibians whose closest living relatives are caecilians but are not descended from any caecilian).
The ears of salamanders and caecilians are less highly developed than those of frogs as they do not normally communicate with each other through the medium of sound. [ 76 ] The eyes of tadpoles lack lids, but at metamorphosis, the cornea becomes more dome-shaped, the lens becomes flatter, and eyelids and associated glands and ducts develop. [ 68 ]
It dated back 290 million years and was hailed as a missing link, a stem batrachian close to the common ancestor of frogs and salamanders, consistent with the widely accepted hypothesis that frogs and salamanders are more closely related to each other (forming a clade called Batrachia) than they are to caecilians.
[4] [5] A 2012 study of the stem-caecilian Eocaecilia found Gerobatrachus to group within Lissamphibia. In this phylogeny, Gerobatrachus is more closely related to frogs and salamanders than it is to caecilians, meaning that Gerobatrachus would have been a descendant of the last common ancestor of modern amphibians. [6]
It belongs to a lineage believed to have given rise to the three living branches of amphibians - frogs, salamanders and limbless caecilians. Creature named for Kermit the Frog offers clues on ...
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.
The Batrachia / b ə ˈ t r eɪ k i ə / are a clade of amphibians that includes frogs and salamanders, but not caecilians nor the extinct allocaudates. [1] The name Batrachia was first used by French zoologist Pierre André Latreille in 1800 to refer to frogs, but has more recently been defined in a phylogenetic sense as a node-based taxon that includes the last common ancestor of frogs and ...