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CHAPTER 6 The Salamanders: Ohio State 7, Alabama 3, Salamanders 0 Imagine our excitement. Very green graduate students, whipped into a froth about being participants in the capture of an animal of which only one specimen had ever been found. And with not just a species were we concerned, but instead with an entire genus. The generic name was Phaeognathus. Phaeognathus hubrichti it was called, after the entomologist Leslie Hubricht, who had brought the sole specimen known to science back to the U. S. National Museum in 1960. The specimen had been found under the leaves in a wooded ravine in Butler County, Alabama, by a field team looking for spiders. No other specimen of the genus had been discovered despite countless efforts by herpetologists for nearly two years. Some herpetologists began to question the validity of the specimen. Perhaps it was only a freak individual of a more common species of the many related types of salamanders in the region. But examination and scrutiny by the experts, including Dr. Richard Highton who officially described it, left no question that Hubricht inadvertently had picked up a specimen of what was the first new genus of vertebrates to be described in the United States in my lifetime. Dr. Ronald Brandon of The University of Alabama was the frothmaker for us. What a shame, he allowed, that here we sat in the spring of 1963, the closest major university (we did not count Auburn) to the "type locality" of the newly described lungless salamander, and we were not searching for more specimens. The type locality ofany species of animal in the world, by agreement of the International Zoological Commission, is the place from which the original specimen came. The type locality of Phaeognathus hubrichti was near McKenzie, Alabama, less than one hundred miles from Tuscaloosa. I wondered at the time why Dr. Brandon 84 • The Salamanders had never before mentioned our lack ofinterest. I was soon to find out, because within three hours from the initiation ofour field trip from the Crimson Tide campus, I met our competition. We encountered the five herpetologists from Ohio State University about dusk in the local cafe near McKenzie Creek. They were in the other booth when we sat down. Dr. Brandon exchanged greetings with their leader, Dr. Barry Valentine. The rest of us on each side tried to look smug and disinterested while making certain our jacket collars were cocked at the right angle. We finally met them, and guess what? They had come all the way from Ohio that day to look for the second specimen of Phaeognathu8, just like us! Their expedition seemed to be a territorial offensive in the field of herpetology. We all watched Brandon and Valentine to see what their subtle actions and comments might reveal. We knew that Valentine and the Buckeyes had us when they "had to run," leaving half-cups of pretty good coffee, two doughnuts , half a ham sandwich, and a piece of apple pie that the waitress brought to the table after the Ohioans had checked out through the cashier. We hadn't even ordered yet, and the game rules didn't permit us to leave until we had ordered and eaten something. Or, at least until Valentine and crew were out of sight. If the Red Dog Cafe hadn't been closed at 2 A.M. when we finally returned to it, I don't think missing supper would have been so bad. A couple of us did manage a cup of coffee to go before we departed, and we shared the two uneaten doughnuts and apple pie left by Ohio State. But the excitement ofa herpetological quest was really all we needed at that point. We roared out onto Highway 31, watching the taillights ofValentine's Ohio State van blink over the last hill to the south. Night presumably would be the time to catch Phaeognathus and each team knew where the other was headed. After passing their van parked on the road shoulder alongside the bridge over McKenzie Creek, we stopped a hundred feet up the hill. How Brandon knew we would need shovels that night I do not know. But indeed, we would need them. Everybody grabbed his own Hashlight and collecting bag and we were off. The Hashlights of Valentine's crew were Hitting about along the stream bank in the woods upstream from the bridge. As we started to go downstream, we heard the shout. It sounded like a...

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