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Scientists revise outdated taxonomy
Six American Museum of Natural History biologist , including Darrel Frost , and 13 workfellow have complete the big analysis ever of the evolutionary kinship among all living amphibians , a project so ambitious that it also defend the tumid analysis of its kind of any radical of vertebrate animals .
The new tree diagram of life story will provide life scientist with a unifying theoretical account to the study amphibian evolution and experimental extinction . show : Atelopus spurelli .
It took more than six calendar month of parallel computing time to crunch genetical and other data to arrive at a proposed evolutionary tree .
The new taxonomy nominate 33 new group and 2 newfangled families , and include dozens of unexampled groupings among amphibians .
anterior cognition of this ancient and ecologically important group of animal was speculative . A fogy anuran , Mesophryne beipiaoensis , from the Cretaceous Period from Liaoning Province , China , is show up .
The number of know amphibian species has grown enormously in recent class and has included the discovery ofDendrobates castaneoticus .
Amphibian populations have undergone monumental , world declines due to factors including home ground departure , as in the Western Andes , Colombia .
Another factor in the global decline of amphibians is the fragmentation of population into smaller mathematical group isolated in the remaining habitat fragments , such as these forest patch in the Western Andes .
Some declines are the result of a fungal disease that can occur in amphibians that know along current , such asColosthesus nubicola .
The new tree diagram was based on data point from 522 amphibian species , with equivalent samples of frogs , caecilians , and salamanders and newts . Tylototriton shanjing , or Mandarin newt , shown .
Caecilians are amphibian that resemble snake in the grass without external scales . Shown : Caecilia thompsoni .
