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Sign up for our mailing list! We also have t-shirts and mugs with our logo!\n\nThanks to Zachary for suggesting this topic! Let's learn about some sightings of what look like miniature theropod dinosaurs running around in the American Southwest!\n\nFurther reading:\n\nAll About Birds: Wild Turkey\n\nA collared lizard running (photo by Joe McDonald from this page):\n\n\n\nBasilisks running:\n\n\n\n\n\nA female wild turkey:\n\n\n\nA male wild turkey (note the tuft of hair-like feathers sticking forward, called a beard) (picture from this page):\n\n\n\nShow transcript:\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\nThanks to Zachary for his email a while back that helped shape this episode. Zachary has kept a lot of different kinds of pets, which we had a nice conversation about, and one of the reptiles he\u2019s kept as a pet is in this episode. I\u2019ll reveal which one at the end.\nBut first, a small correction, maybe. Paul from the awesome podcast Varmints! messaged me to point out that the word spelled A-N-O-L-E is pronounced a-NOLL, not a-NO-lee. I\u2019d looked it up before I recorded so that confused me, so I looked it up again and it turns out that both pronunciations are used in different places and both are correct. So if you\u2019ve always heard it a-NOLL, you\u2019re fine, but now I can\u2019t decide which pronunciation I should use.\nThis week we\u2019re going to learn about an interesting mystery of the American southwest. Even though non-avian dinosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago, occasionally someone spots what they think is a little dinosaur running along on its hind legs. They\u2019re sometimes called mini rexes.\nMany reports come from the American southwest, especially Colorado, Arizona, and Texas. For instance, in the late 1960s two teenaged brothers were looking for arrowheads near their home in Dove Creek, Colorado when they were startled by an animal running away from them at high speed. The boys said it looked like a miniature dinosaur, only about 14 inches tall, or 35 centimeters. It was kicking up so much dust as it ran on its hind legs that the boys had trouble making out details. They did note that it seemed to be brown and possibly had a row of spines running down its back, maybe even two rows of spines, similar to an iguana\u2019s. It had long hind legs and shorter front legs that it held out in front of it as it ran.\nThe animal left behind three-toed footprints that the boys followed until they disappeared into some brush. The boys were familiar with turkey footprints but these were different, with the toes closer together and no rear-pointing toe prints.\nIn April 1996, in Cortez, Colorado, a woman saw an animal run past her house on its hind legs, seemingly from a nearby pond. It was greenish-gray and stood about 3.5 feet tall, or about a meter. It had a long neck and long, tapering tail. She didn\u2019t notice its front legs but its hind legs had muscular thighs but were thinner below the hock joint.\nOne night in July 2001, a woman and her grown daughter were driving near Yellow Jacket, Colorado when they noticed an animal at the edge of the road. At first the driver thought it was a small deer and slammed on the brakes so she wouldn\u2019t hit it, but when it darted across the road both women were shocked to see what looked like a small dinosaur pass through the headlight beams of the car. They reported it was about 3 feet tall, or 91 centimeters, and that it had no feathers or fur. Its legs were thin and long, while its arms were tiny and held out in front of its body. It had a slender neck, a small head, and a long tapering tail.\nThe witnesses in both the 1996 sighting and the 2001 sighting noted that the animal they saw ran gracefully. They also all agreed that the animals\u2019 skin appeared smooth.\nLots of dinosaurs used to walk on their hind legs, but the reptiles living today are all four-footed. There are a few lizards that run on their hind legs occasionally, though,