Andrias Scheuchzeri (Paperback)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Andrias scheuchzeri is an extinct species of giant salamander, which only is known from fossils. It and the extant A. davidianus cannot be mutually diagnosed, and the latter, only described in 1871, is therefore sometimes considered a synonym of the former. In his book Lithographia Helvetica from 1726, Johann Jakob Scheuchzer described a fossil as Homo diluvii testis, believing it to be the remains of a human that drowned in the biblical Deluge. The fossil was about 1 m long, lacked its tail and hind legs, and could thus be interpreted as showing some resemblance to the remains of a violently trampled human child.