are the lists of new extant amphibian species described every year since 2004, with links to descriptions and references for each species. The lowest number is 117, the highest is 192, and this year is at 121 already even though the pandemic has slowed down both field and lab research.
Gesendet: Montag, 12. Oktober 2020 um 09:50 Uhr
Von: "Thomas Richard Holtz" <tholtz@umd.edu>
While we COULD know those modern species better, it actually takes effort. A great many modern species have never had their skeletal anatomy adequately described, for instance.
In
this paper I co-described an Oligocene newt specimen (likely a new species, but the genus needs to be completely revised, and the material doesn't overlap with one of the other nominal species). As part of that, I compiled what was then the largest morphological data matrix for salamandrid phylogeny. There are some odd gaps in it because, for instance, the vertebrae of some of western Europe's most common and widespread newt species are simply not known to science. I searched far and wide, on teh intarwebz and in academic libraries, and found nothing.
And while the vertebrae of the Pacific Northwest giant salamanders, Dicamptodon, are known to several individual scientists who have compared them to various fossils, I've been unable to find any evidence of a publication. Not even a drawing of one vertebra casually interspersed in a larger reference work, nothing. The head of a Dicamptodon species is on Digimorph – the rest is not. The fossils in question (isolated vertebrae from the Cenozoic of Europe) were originally described as dicamptodontids, later work has doubted that, and no reasons have been made explicit for either conclusion.
The fun part is that salamander vertebrae are pretty complex. There's a strong heterochronic signal in them as usual, but they would be very useful for phylogeny if more than two or three people cared (...and managed to get that research financed).