River Dinos

 

River dinos are small, featherless, dinosaur like creatures. They look like smaller versions of large carnivorous dinosaurs, such as allosaurus or tyrannosaurus, although they are described as having long necks on occasion. There's no report of raptor claws on their feet. Another dinosaur these creatures are often compared to is compsognathus, or at least its depictions in movies. These dinos come in quite a size range, from two feet to five feet tall. Although none of them are as large as the large carnosaurs they're often compared to.

These creatures are most often seen in the four corners region, but have been seen all over each of those states, and as far away as Texas and Oklahoma. They are most often seen around river valleys, ponds and other sources of water, hence the name river dinos. Although they're also called mini-rexes and prairie devils.

While I believe witnesses are seeing an unknown creature I'm certain it's not a living dinosaur tracing it's ancestry back to the Mesozoic. The first and most notable reason is the complete lack of feathers All known theropods in this small size range, including primitive ones like coelophysis had feathers. And certainly they would need them too, as the small theropods were warm blooded and needed some sort of covering to protect them from cold weather. The four corners area were these river dinos are most often seen has a continental climate. While this region gets quite hot on summer days, the average temperature in December is bellow freezing.

The second reason I doubt this is a dinosaur is that there's no fossil record of any dinosaurs surviving after the KT extinction. Even if this is a small, geographically restricted population there would still be fossils from a larger area before they started declining. People often state how there was no fossil evidence between the coelacanth's perceived extinction and its modern rediscovery. However the coelacanth lives in deep water where the ocean plates are constantly recycling themselves, and where it would be very difficult to hunt for fossils anyway. It's a lot harder to hide things on land were the crust is stable and there's a continuous fossil record. And the American south west has an excellent fossil record, spanning through the Mesozoic and Cenozoic, right into the recent end-ice age extinction. And since the coelacanth's discovery Cenozoic fossils have been discovered in Morocco anyway.

So if it's not a real dinosaur, what are people seeing? Well there's a few possibilities, especially if you're willing to delve into the paranormal.

One idea is that they're a lizard species that convergently evolved to look like a dinosaur. During the Triassic some Psuedosuchians such as Effigia and Shuvosaurus evolved into the 'running dino' shape with an upright stance, long legs and long neck. Today bird like ostriches and emus have also evolved into this shapes. It's possible that a similar niche in the American south west could select for a similarly shaped creature, but a reptile filled the role in the absence of large ratites. The problem with this is an animal would need to be warm blooded to live such an active lifestyle. While lizards are able to run in a squatting stance on their hind legs for a short period of time they don't have the stamina to continuously walk on their hind legs only.

Another possibility is misplaced kangaroos. Mysterious kangaroos seen outside of Australia are another type of frequently seen cryptid in many parts of the world. Just as there are paranormal reports of humans finding their way through portals, it's possible animals may stumble into them as well. A more prosaic explanation for misplaced kangaroos is that they're former pets that escaped or were released. 

If we're willing to consider portals, then it could also be wildlife from a different version of Earth, different dimension or time line where life evolved differently. 

The most out there idea is that the river dinos could be egergors created by societies collective desire for surviving dinosaurs. Although in this case you would think people would see raptors, which are the most popular small dinosaur. Although this would explain why they're featherless.

While researching the subject of river dinos I struggled to find good eye witness cases. The majority of cases consisted of an unknown witness stating they saw a creature fitting the description of a river dino, but with little to no details beyond this. No location was given beyond the state and no time beyond the year. As well what the witness was doing at the time, how they reacted to the sighting and what the river dino was doing at the time were all missing. I find accounts such as these extremely suspicious because the lack of details make them very easy to hoax. In addition to this when someone witnesses a fortean event they're often affected on an emotional level and it comes out in their description of events. This is why first hand accounts of high strangeness are so important. The evidence that was being passed around instead were some dubious photos. The origin of these photos was not given. Furthermore one was an obvious fake, the other two were so blurry and small it was impossible to make any judgment from them.

With that lack of evidence I was ready to write river dinos off a just an urban legend, or worse a hoax. This is something I don't do lightly. I try to consider every possibility before jumping to concluding a fortean topic is a hoax. I even consider the blatantly unscientific theories, topics that more mainstream cryptozoologists disparagingly call 'Woo'.

I was at this point when I started finding blogs and sources talking about an old school cryptozoologist named Nick Sucik. He had researched the river dinos, along with many other cryptids found in the four corners region back in the 90's. There were partial recounts of cases from his book Cryptozoology and the Investigation of Lesser-known Mystery Animals, printed in 2006. Mr. Sucik didn't have a website of his own, yet other blogs and fortean investigators spoke of him with high regard. Unfortunately his book was out of print, so I was unable to get a copy of it. The topic of river dinos had been popular enough there had even been an episode of Unsolved Mysteries about in in 1996. However I couldn't find any source to watch this episode either.

It now appeared that river dinos were not an internet hoax, but a much older cryptid anomaly who's information had been lost to time. Now all we're left with is passed down footnotes from more detailed accounts, a few blurry photos and people trying to invent evidence in order to breathe live into an old topic. As I sift through old information I can only imagine what it would be like to be an investigator with their feet on the ground, people like Nick Sucik, John Keel or Linda Godfrey, who actively revealed these strange events first hand. As it stand right now I don't know what to make of river dinos. The more I look the more it appears there was more information on them at one time but it's just not available to me anymore.