Carolina Sandhills salamander discovery featured in Walter Magazine
For immediate release ‐ March 03, 2021
Contact: Jon Pishney, 919.707.8083. Images available upon request
Carolina Sandhills Salamander (Eurycea arenicola) in life, from North Carolina. Photo: Todd Pusser. Click to enlarge.
“I thought it was just an oddball,” says Alvin Braswell of the unusual red salamander he first saw in 1969.
At the time, he was the assistant curator for lower invertebrates at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. It looked like a Southern Two-Lined Salamander (Eurycea cirrigera), but “the specimen had hardly any stripes, it was different — and it alerted us to pay more attention.”
Braswell went on to spend many rainy nights along streams “all over” the Sandhills, burrowing through root tangles in search of more of these salamanders. He learned to find them on roadsides, where they tended to move on damp winter nights — little streaks on the asphalt, indistinguishable from pine needles when their heads were down.
Five decades later, that “oddball” red salamander is now known officially as the Carolina Sandhills Salamander (Eurycea arenicola). It marks the 64th salamander species for North Carolina.