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Archives of The Cold Blooded NewsThe Newsletter of the Colorado Herpetological SocietyVolume 29, Number 1; January, 2002 |
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Snake Hearing? Where have frogs gone? T. rex Relative World's Smallest Lizard Ask the Vet Monstrous Croc Disposal Crocodiles It's a nice style Odor Cues by a Lizard Tortoise & Onion Next Issue February 2002 Previous Issues About the Cold Blooded News CHS Home Page |
It's a nice style and we'll keep itReprinted from the Newsletter of the East Texas Herpetolodical Society, Vol.13, No.6, November 2001.Originally published in the Bulletin of the Chicago Herpetological Society, Vol.36, No.4, April 2001. A 150 million-year-old Chinese fossil site provides an extraordinary new window on the origin of one of the major groups of living amphibians. More than 500 fossils, many of which preserve the entire skeleton and impressions of soft tissues, provide compelling evidence that the salamander originated in Asia according to a report in the March 29, 2001, issue of Nature. "All the major primitive salamander families are now known to be present in Asia," said Neil Shubin, professor and chairman of organismal biology and anatomy of the University of Chicago. "The simple, take-home message is that there is an Asian origin for all salamanders... The diversity of the species in this find, combined with molecular data and study of characteristics from living salamanders, leads to the inescapable conclusion that almost all the major groups of salamanders evolved very early, and not much has been happening since." This discovery pushes back salamander origins 85 million years to the late Jurassic, about 150 million years ago. All life phases were found as were some soft tissue impression and hundreds of other beautifully preserved fossils. One of the most interesting things they found was that neoteny was already a salamander life style. Copyright © 1998 - 2006, Colorado Herpetological Society. All rights reserved. | ||
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