Salamandroidea

Salamandroidea Temporal range: fossil range: 157 mya – present
Salamandra atra
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Class:	Amphibia
Order:	Urodela
Suborder:	Salamandroidea
Families
Ambystomatidae Amphiumidae Dicamptodontidae Plethodontidae Proteidae Rhyacotritonidae Salamandridae

Salamandroidea is a suborder of salamanders, the advanced salamanders. The members of the suborder are found worldwide except for Antarctica, Southern Sahara, and Oceania.

All members use internal fertilization.^[1] The female is fertilized by a spermatophore, a sperm-containing cap put by the male in her cloaca. The sperm is stored in on the roof of the cloaca until it is needed at the time of egg laying.^[2]

The earliest known salamandroid fossils are from the Tiaojishan Formation. They are dated to the late Jurassic period about 157 million years ago.^[3]

1. ↑ Miller, Jessica J. "Caudate families (newts & salamanders)". Livingunderworld.org. Archived from the original on 2007-10-16. Retrieved 2007-11-09.
2. ↑ Sever, David M.; Stanley E. Trauth (1990). "Cloacal anatomy of female salamanders of the plethodontid subfamily Desmognathinae (Amphibia: Urodela)". Transactions of the American Microscopical Society. 109 (2): 193–204. doi:10.2307/3226814. JSTOR 3226814.
3. ↑ Gao K.-Q. and Shubin, N.H. (2012). "Late Jurassic salamandroid from western Liaoning, China." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (advance online publication). doi:10.1073/pnas.1009828109 [1] Archived 2019-09-15 at the Wayback Machine