Australasian Tree Frogs

Pelodryadidae, also known as Australian treefrogs (although not all members are arboreal), is a family of frogs found in Australia, New Guinea and their surrounding islands, and have also been introduced to Guam, New Caledonia, New Zealand, and Vanuatu.

Pelodryadidae is thought to be the sister group to the leaf frogs (Phyllomedusidae), a family of arboreal frogs known from the Neotropics. The common ancestor of both families is thought to have lived in the early Cenozoic South America, with the two subfamilies diverging from one another during the Eocene. The ancestors of the subfamily Pelodryadidae likely invaded Australasia via the Antarctic land bridge, which at the time was not yet frozen over, thus was hospitable for the dispersing frogs. The clade comprising both subfamilies is sister to the Hylinae, from which they diverged in the early Paleogene.

The oldest known fossil of a Pelodryadidae frog is of †Litoria tylerantiqua from 55 million years ago. This places a minimum age on the divergence of this group from the Phyllomedusidae, and confirms that these two groups likely diverged even earlier.