Aquatic and Land Animal DiversityAmphibians |
What fossil amphibian was once mistaken for a human skeleton? |
In 1731, Swiss geologist Johann Scheuchzer (1672–1733) found a fossil of what he thought was a human skeleton—what he called Homon diluvii testis, or “man, a witness of the flood,” in reference to the Bible. What he had actually discovered was the fossil of a twenty million-year-old extinct giant salamander.