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Amphibians are widely considered to be sentient, able to feel emotions such as anxiety and fear. [169] In one experiment, when offered live fruit flies (Drosophila virilis), salamanders chose the larger of 1 vs 2 and 2 vs 3. Frogs can distinguish between low numbers (1 vs 2, 2 vs 3, but not 3 vs 4) and large numbers (3 vs 6, 4 vs 8, but not 4 ...
This cladistic approach defines "tetrapods" as the nearest common ancestor of all living amphibians (the lissamphibians) and all living amniotes (reptiles, birds, and mammals), along with all of the descendants of that ancestor. In effect, "tetrapod" is a name reserved solely for animals which lie among living tetrapods, so-called crown tetrapods.
The evolution of tetrapods began about 400 million years ago in the Devonian Period with the earliest tetrapods evolved from lobe-finned fishes. [1] Tetrapods (under the apomorphy-based definition used on this page) are categorized as animals in the biological superclass Tetrapoda, which includes all living and extinct amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals.
From the African tree frog to the tiger salamander, there are thousands of species of amphibians that can be found scattered all over the world. Amazing Amphibians: A 5-Day Unit Plan for Kids Skip ...
Many temnospondyls are much larger than living amphibians, and superficially resemble crocodiles, which has led many taxa to be named with the suffix -suchus.The largest taxa, which were predominantly the Mesozoic stereospondyls, had skulls exceeding one meter in length, and the entire animal would have been several meters in length (for reference, the largest living amphibian, Andrias, is ...
The Lissamphibia (from Greek λισσός (lissós, "smooth") + ἀμφίβια (amphíbia), meaning "smooth amphibians") is a group of tetrapods that includes all modern amphibians. Lissamphibians consist of three living groups: the Salientia ( frogs and their extinct relatives), the Caudata ( salamanders and their extinct relatives), and the ...
Both are descendants of archosaurs, and are therefore archosaurs themselves under phylogenetic taxonomy. Crocodilians (which include all modern crocodiles, alligators, and gharials) and birds flourish today in the Holocene. It is generally agreed that birds have the most species of all terrestrial vertebrates. [citation needed]
The term paraphyly, or paraphyletic, derives from the two Ancient Greek words παρά (pará), meaning "beside, near", and φῦλον (phûlon), meaning "genus, species", [2] [3] and refers to the situation in which one or several monophyletic subgroups of organisms (e.g., genera, species) are left apart from all other descendants of a unique common ancestor.