This should be really interesting....

i was given three books called "The royal natural history" Edited by Richard Lydekker, a while back. they were printed in 1896, it's not the complete collection, but of the three books, two cover mammals, and the other covers fish, reptiles and ampibians. it's interesting to see what we knew about amphibians then. i'll copy a few extracts on caudates over the next few days.

just as a bit of background, in 1896 there are 4 caudate families, not 10

salamandridae: this contains salamandridae, hynobiidae, rhyacotritonidae, ambystomatidae, dicamptodontidae, plethodonitdae.

amphiumidae: this only contained amphiumidae, cryptobranchidae

proteidae and sirenidae were as they are now.

(Message edited by will_j on August 21, 2005)

here is an extract on caudate ranges:

As regards to their geographical distribution, the salamanders and newts, of which there are rather more than 120 existing species, are mainly characteristic of the Northern Hemisphere, being represented only by a few scattered forms in the Southern Hemisphere, and quite unknown in Africa south of the Sahara and in Australasia. The northern part of the old world is home to the true newts, of which four species extend into Northern Africa; and it likewise contains one of the fish-like salamanders [fish like salamanders are amphiuma and cryptobrachidae combined into one family, amphiumidae.], the olm. True newts are very abundant in the western portion of this region, but as we proceed eastwards they become less numerous, and we notice an approximation to American types of the order, although only two genera are common to the Old and New Worlds. North America is especially rich in tailed batrachians, containing more than half the representatives of the entire suborder, and having two-legged salamanders (Sirenidae) peculiar to it. Axolotls are here especially abundant, and there are also peculiar genera belonging to the families of the fish like and gilled salamanders [necturus I assume]. The oriental region possesses only two species, namely a peculiar genus tylotriton of newts in Yunan and the eastern Himalaya, and an axolotl in Siam [????? No idea what that could be]. Tropical America, on the other hand, has ten species; among which may be specially noticed the newts of the genus Spelerpes , which are also represented by one species from Central America and the West Indies [???again totally stumped], and two others from the mountains of Columbia, Ecuador, and Northern Peru. Geologically, the group is by no means an old one, its earliest known representative (Hylaeobatrachus) occurring in the Wealden strata of Belgium; and these animals do not appear to have become abundant until the tertiary epoch.

i'd love to know what the axolotl in Siam is/was and also more about the species in the Caribbean.