Versions

Version 6.2. 6 January 2023. Addition of Geographic occurrence reports to species records, including (1) listing of political entities were a vouchered naturally occurring member of the fauna; (2) where like to occur or controversially thought to occur; (3) where endemic, and (4) where introduced. 

Version 6.1: 25 January 2020. Not visibly different from version 6.0 on the public face, but much improved on the administrative side, allowing much faster updating. Previous subversions (i.e., modifications of individual records) can be accessed using the Wayback Machine (http://archive.org/web/web.php). 

Version 6.0: 17 January 2014. Completely renovated database with the capability of real-time modifications. Improved searching capability using Boolean grammar. 

Version 5.6: 9 January 2013. Corrections and updates. Addition of links to iNaturalist and CalPhoto Images, and improved comment-searching.

Version 5.5. 31 January 2011. Corrections and updates.

Version 5.4. 8 April 2010. Corrections and updates as well as a new imbedded feature that provides a complete bibliographic citation for each in-text citation. Also, adds links to GenBank. Style changes to bring the amphibian catalogue into line with the overarching AMNH style.

Version 5.3. 1 February 2009. Corrections and updates. 

Version 5.2: 15 July 2008. Corrections and updates.

Version 5.1. 1 October 2007. Many corrections and updates.

Version 5.0. 1 February 2007. Many corrections and updates. Improved searching of Google by using not only the preferred taxon name, but also common synonyms. (ASW now employs the power of the web and the database to circumvent the problems associated with using taxonomic names as indices to literature and images.)

Version 4.0. 17 August 2006. Counts of species for supraspecific taxa provided as well as many updates and additions.

Version 3.0: 22 August 2004. New web interface and new database structure, as well as many corrections and additions. Improved geographic searching ability with the addition of Boolean searches.

Version 2.21: 15 July 2002. Many corrections and additions to text and improvements in geographic searching ability. Improved database software. Changes in subfamily organization of the Leptodactylidae and Hylidae. No longer available online.

Version 2.2: 1 September 2000. Many corrections and additions to text made. Geographic querying improved. The distributions for many species, particularly in tropical Asia and Africa, are poorly known and their descriptions highly provisional. I have also made a large number of educated guesses as to the countries within which taxa might occur. Users are therefore cautioned to use the results of the geographic querying tool as a finding aid and not as an authoritative summary of taxa documented for any particular political unit. (This will have to wait until large numbers of research collections have placed their voucher data on the web and the quality of identifications in collections is drastically improved.) Because "common names" (i.e., English coined names) are frequently requested/required for regulatory paperwork in the United States, English names that have previously been published or commonly used by CITES or the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are included and searchable. (Many of these names are clumsy and wildly inappropriate but are included because of perceived need within the anglophone North American regulatory community.) First version to be linked to GenBank.

Version 2.1: 15 November 1999. Many, many corrections made and querying speed much improved. Addition of taxonomic browsing. No longer available online.

Version 2.0: 22 July, 1999. First online database version. Many corrections and additions. Reformatting of records and addition of synonymies as well as literature source of those synonymies. Reformulation of abstracts of relevant literature in comments. Unavailable for access.

Version. 1.0: June, 1985. Printed version.

Contact Darrel Frost (frost at amnh dot org) with questions about past versions of the catalog.