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It has an average length of 7.7 mm (0.30 in) and is part of a genus that contains four of the world's ten smallest frog species. [40] The largest living amphibian is the 1.8 m (5 ft 11 in) Chinese giant salamander (Andrias davidianus) [41] but this is a great deal smaller than the largest amphibian that ever existed—the extinct 9 m (30 ft ...
The largest living amphibian is the 1.8 m (5 ft 11 in) South China giant salamander (Andrias sligoi), but this is dwarfed by prehistoric temnospondyls such as Mastodonsaurus which could reach up to 6 m (20 ft) in length. The study of amphibians is called batrachology, while the study of both reptiles and amphibians is called herpetology.
Amphibians are ectothermic, tetrapod vertebrates of the class Amphibia. 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 .
All extant (living) amphibians belong to the monophyletic subclass Lissamphibia, with three living orders: Anura (frogs and toads), Urodela (salamanders), and Gymnophiona . Evolved to be mostly semiaquatic , amphibians have adapted to inhabit a wide variety of habitats , with most species living in freshwater , wetland or terrestrial ecosystems ...
They are also known to fishermen as "conger eels" or "Congo snakes", which are zoologically incorrect designations or misnomers, since amphiumas are actually salamanders (and thus amphibians), and not fish, nor reptiles and are not from Congo. Amphiuma exhibits one of the largest complements of DNA in the living world, around 25 times more than ...
Linnaeus, working from species-poor Sweden, where the common adder and grass snake are often found hunting in water, included all reptiles and amphibians in class "III – Amphibia" in his Systema Naturæ. [8] The terms reptile and amphibian were largely interchangeable, reptile (from Latin repere, 'to creep') being preferred by the French. [9]
Amphibians are in decline worldwide, with 2 out of every 5 species threatened by extinction, according to a paper published Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature.
Instead, they consistute an evolutionary grade (a paraphyletic group), ancestral to living tetrapods such as lissamphibians (modern amphibians) and amniotes (reptiles, mammals, and kin). "Labyrinthodont"-grade vertebrates evolved from lobe-finned fishes in the Devonian , though a formal boundary between fish and amphibian is difficult to define ...