Rainer Schoch

This book is about "amphibians" in the traditional sense, i.e., as all tetrapods (limbed vertebrates) that are not amniotes, thus including alongside modern lissamphibians various stem-amniotes and basal tetrapods that branched off before the amniote-lissamphibian split.

It's not otherwise old-fashioned in approach, however, employing phylogenetic nomenclature (so avoids formally referring to its subject matter as "Amphibia") and happily employs cladistic terminology and molecular data.

The various chapters deal with issues like phylogeny (Schoch subscribes to the "temnospondyl hypothesis", deriving the lissamphibians from within an otherwise-extinct group known as the Temnospondyli), evo-devo, and paleoecology.

I liked it a lot. I just wish I'd gotten around to it before it got ten years old!… (más)