
The Microsaurs of Yore
It’s an exciting time to be interested in microsaurs. Wait a minute — what the hell is a microsaur? Let’s find out…...
It’s an exciting time to be interested in microsaurs. Wait a minute — what the hell is a microsaur? Let’s find out…...
Amphibian-themed conferences are always good, and I just went to one -- it was great!
One of the most terrifying frogs in existence is bright yellow, social, reasonably intelligent (for a frog), and one of the biggest members of its group...
Sirens—long-bodied, aquatic salamanders—are weird. But are they really so weird that they might not be salamanders at all? It's a radical idea that has at least been considered...
Might it be that salamanders (and caecilians) are not close kin of frogs, that they evolved wholly independently of all other tetrapods?
Have the animals we call frogs actually evolved separately—from distinct ancestors—on two or three separate occasions? Err, no, but let's see what people have said about this sort of thing anyway.....
Frogs and toads—anurans—have profoundly modified skeletons and are among the most atypical of tetrapods...
They have robust skulls, big teeth, they reach a reasonable size and they're restricted (today) to northwestern North America. They're the Pacific giant salamanders...
Fame at last for a poorly known group of African frogs...
Sirens build nests, have beaks, eat plants and have a history of "size shuffling"--they're incredible!
I'm glad you asked
I must have said that one of my aims here at Tet Zoo is to write about obscure amphibian species that rarely get covered elsewhere. The main thing stopping or slowing this plan concerns the availability of images – good, available pictures showing the species concerned are often not availability...
The presence in Europe of plethodontids is unusual enough (albeit well known), but a major surprise in plethodontid research was the discovery of an Asian member of the group, the Korean crevice salamander Karsenia koreana Min et al ., 2005...
Today we’re going to look at one of the most remarkable groups of frogs in the world. And as of July 2015, there are over 6540 anuran species, so that’s a lot to choose from...
A few weeks back - during the Tet Zoo frog event - I wrote about the peculiar African brevicipitid frogs, variously termed short-headed frogs or rain frogs.
Here's a very brief article to a group of frogs. It's a slightly modified version of an article that initially appeared on Tet Zoo ver 2 during November 2007.
Back in October 2007 (at Tet Zoo ver 2) I wrote a very brief article on a poorly known, gigantic, deeply weird South American frog: the Helmeted water toad, Chilean giant frog or Gay's frog* Calyptocephalella gayi (long known - incorrectly it turns out - as Caudiverbera caudiverbera)...
Suddenly and unexpectedly, I have the urge to write about frogs. Today we look briefly at the first of two behaviourally peculiar, anatomically surprising groups, both of which are endemic to sub-Saharan Africa, both of which belong to a major neobatrachian frog clade called Allodapanura, and both of which have been united in a clade [...]..
Episode 2 of David Attenborough's Conquest of the Skies appeared on TV the other day, and I watched it (in fact, I livetweeted throughout, mostly because I wanted to talk about their portrayal of pterosaurs and Mesozoic theropods)...
The world is full of frogs, and while I've made reasonable efforts over Tet Zoo's nearly nine years of operation to cover some of this diversity (see the links at the bottom of this article), there are many groups that I've never even mentioned...
Support science journalism.
Thanks for reading Scientific American. Knowledge awaits.
Already a subscriber? Sign in.
Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue.
Create Account