''Andrias'' is a genus of

giant salamander The Cryptobranchidae are a family of fully aquatic salamanders commonly known as the giant salamanders. They include the largest living amphibians. The family is native to China, Japan, and the eastern United States. They constitute one of two ...

s. It includes the largest

salamander Salamanders are a group of amphibians typically characterized by their lizard-like appearance, with slender bodies, blunt snouts, short limbs projecting at right angles to the body, and the presence of a tail in both larvae and adults. All t ...

s in the world, with ''A. japonicus'' reaching a length of , and ''A. sligoi'' reaching . While extant species are only known from

East Asia East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both Geography, geographical and culture, ethno-cultural terms. The modern State (polity), states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. ...

, several extinct species in the genus are known from late Oligocene and Neogene aged fossils collected in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

and North America, indicating that the genus formerly had a much wider range.

Taxonomy

The generic name derives from

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...

ἀνδριάς, "statue". The former name was ''Megalobatrachus'', from Ancient Greek meaning "giant frog".

Species

Extant

Based on genetic evidence, there may be more extant species in the genus. A study in 2018 found that ''A. davidianus'' ''

sensu lato ''Sensu'' is a Latin word meaning "in the sense of". It is used in a number of fields including biology, geology, linguistics, semiotics, and law. Commonly it refers to how strictly or loosely an expression is used in describing any particular c ...

'' was a

species complex In biology, a species complex is a group of closely related organisms that are so similar in appearance and other features that the boundaries between them are often unclear. The taxa in the complex may be able to hybridize readily with each oth ...

that consisted of at least 5 different species. ''A. sligoi'', which was formerly synonymized with ''A. davidianus'', was revived in 2019 for one of these populations, and in 2022, another of these was described as ''A. jiangxiensis''.

Extinct

References

AmphibiaWeb - Andrias japonicus
Accessed 2008-04-08.
AmphibiaWeb - Andrias davidianus
Accessed 2008-04-08.
Amphibian Species of the World 5.1.
Accessed 2008-04-10. {{Taxonbar, from=Q922164 Cryptobranchidae Amphibian genera Taxa named by Johann Jakob von Tschudi Extant Miocene first appearances