plethodontid

English

Etymology

From scientific Latin Plethodontidae (family name), from Plethodon (genus name), from Ancient Greek πλῆθος (plêthos, “great number”) + ὀδούς (odoús, “tooth”).

Noun

plethodontid (plural plethodontids)

1. (zoology) Any of the Plethodontidae, a family of lungless salamanders. [from 20th c.]
   • 2007 December 4, Henry Fountain, “Inveterate Wanderer: An Intercontinental Salamander Family”, in New York Times‎^[1]:

     The family of salamanders known as plethodontids are unusual in many ways.

   • 2018, Tim Flannery, Europe: The First 100 Million Years, Penguin, published 2019, page 127:

     In Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri, for example, they are—if you count them by weight—the dominant form of life, with 1400 tonnes of plethodontids lurking in the leaf litter and wetlands of its 600,000 hectares.