However, a 2008 study found D. holbrooki as previously defined to be polyphyletic and containing multiple undescribed species.

[5] It is named in honor of Barry D. Valentine, a biologist and former faculty emeritus at Ohio State University, who had first suggested the distinctiveness of this taxon in the early 1960s.

[6] It is found in the Gulf Coast region, where it ranges from the Mobile Bay region of Alabama west through the southern half of Mississippi to eastern Louisiana.

It has a larger body structure than D. holbrooki and has nondescript dorsal markings instead of the crisply-defined blotches on other Desmognathus species.

They also differ in aspects of the skull, and the tails of D. valentinei have a bladelike shape instead of narrowing to a tip.