Description

Vomerine teeth in continuous series lying parallel anteriorly and diverging posteriorly. Head bluntly oval. Crown of head flattened, depressed in frontal and interorbital areas. Sides of head with bony and glandular areas elevated to level of upper eyelid. From above, the body has two series of rounded knob-like tubercles. Tail compressed laterally, with a well-developed fin fold. Skin of body and tail finely granular. From above, dark-brown and glands on sides of neck and dorso-lateral region lighter brown. The parotoids, caudal fin fold, and warts light, from light-brown to red-orange. Tail usually lighter than body. Chin, belly and sides nearly black.

Recently it has been suggested that Tylototriton shanjing is a synonym for T. verrucosus, based on similarity in Cyt b (Zhang et al. 2007). However, only a single sample of T. verrucosus was analyzed, from China, and compared to thirty-nine samples of T. shanjing. No samples of T. verrucosus were analyzed from other parts of the range. In addition, T. shanjing was shown to breed true in captivity (Ziegler et al. 2008). Thus the decision to place T. shanjing in synonymy with T. verrucosus must be considered premature until further analysis is undertaken with more samples of T. verrucosus, from more locations. (For an English translation of Zhang et al., contact Jennifer Macke at jpmackeATcomcast.net)