( abundant in North and South America w...)Discovery of an American salamander where it shouldn't be: Korea

"In the past, we have seen this one group that occurs in Sardinia and Italy as being somehow a special case, an enigmatic case," he said. "Now all of a sudden, we realize that if they're in Korea and they're in Italy, they must have been in between as well. There were probably plethodontid salamanders across Asia in the past, and they've largely gone extinct."

That doesn't mean that biologists won't find more lungless salamanders in wet areas of Europe and Asia. Wake himself is eager to go to Korea and to the nearby Shandong area of China to look for more. He continues to be amazed at the new amphibian species being discovered - an increase of 40 percent in the number of known species in the last 20 years. Just recently, some 50 new frogs were discovered in heavily populated Sri Lanka.

"It's a very paradoxical situation. On the one hand, amphibians are declining, and they are in terrible difficulty, and on the other, we are discovering new species," said Wake. "I think there still are a lot of surprises to come in, especially with respect to nocturnal organisms that do not have breeding congregations, where they don't come together en masse ever in their lives."

He noted that numerous plants and animals in Asia and eastern North America share an evolutionary connection, suggesting some past geographic link between Asia and North America when the world's climate was much warmer, before about 60 million years ago. The closest relative of the Japanese and Chinese giant salamanders is the hellbender of the eastern U.S., for example, while Chinese alligators are related to the American alligator. About 65 genera of flowering plants in Asia also have close rel
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Source:University of California - Berkeley