Echinotriton maxiquadratus

The alpine Acanthus salamander is an amphibian of the family Salamandridae and genus Acanthus. It lives in degraded secondary shrub forests near the top of the mountain, surrounded by tall grass and rhododendrons, and scattered wetlands and still water ponds. The environment is humid and foggy most of the time. Adult salamanders hide in rocks or plant roots during the day. The same habitat also houses the harp frog, the broad marsh frog, the Chinese giant toad, the Chinese rain frog, and the white-jawed tree frog.

In June 2022, researchers from the School of Biology and Environment of Nanjing Forestry University also discovered that the two sister species, Zhenhai Acanthus and Alpine Acanthus, are subgenera endemic to China, and named them Sino-saurus.

Listed in the second level of the "List of National Key Protected Wildlife in China".

In China, it is distributed in the border areas of Guangdong, Jiangxi and Fujian provinces.
It lives in the depressions on the top of mountains, and its living environment includes swamps, still water pits, azalea trees, dense grass and many stones.

The trunk is flat, and the back of the body is covered with warts. The ridges on both sides of the head are not well developed, and there is a slight V-shaped ridge behind the top of the head. There are about 12 warts on each side of the body arranged in a vertical row. The ends of some ribs in the naked warts can pass through the skin to the outside of the body. There are neck folds, and the ventral surface of the body is densely covered with warts, and the constriction lines are not obvious. The whole body is brown-black, with only the protrusions at the corners of the mouth, the tips of the fingers and toes, and the tail pelvic fin folds being orange-yellow.