Florida Woman Claims She Captured Footage of "Small Dinosaur" on Home Security Camera

A still image from the security camera footage. (Cristina Ryan / FOX 35) — A still image from the security camera footage. *(Cristina Ryan / FOX 35)*

Florida woman Cristina Ryan told FOX 35 news earlier this month that she had captured security camera footage of a mysterious creature running across her yard in Palm Coast.

According to Ryan, everyone to whom she's shown the video has concluded that the animal looks like a small dinosaur.

"Any animal we can come up with that would be 'walking' at 3:40 in the morning, wouldn't walk this way," she said. "Maybe I've watched Jurassic Park too many times, but I see a raptor or other small dinosaur! Some say a large bird, but that makes no sense—since whatever it is appears to have front legs. So not sure? Lol. I'm sticking with raptor myself."

Velociraptors were six-and-a-half-foot-tall, 180-pound bipedal dinosaurs with enlarged, sickle-shaped claws on their hindfeet that lived between 71 and 75 million years ago during the latter part of the Cretaceous Period.

In the video, an animal with something reflective on or near its head can be seen running across Ryan’s yard, but opinions among those who have watched the video differ on what it actually is. The footage is low definition and details are difficult to make out, if not lost completely, as a result.

Some viewers speculated that it might be one of Florida’s invasive reptile species, such as an iguana, with a jar stuck on its head, while others said it could be a peafowl or other bird. Believers in these hypotheses both pointed to the thickness of the animal’s tail and how it appears to stay inline with the animal’s back as it runs. However, those animals are diurnal and rest after the sun goes down, meaning they are unlikely to be active when the video was made. Furthermore, whatever animal it is, it does appear to have forelegs—as Ryan mentioned—which would rule out a bird.

Other viewers thought that the animal could be a dog wearing an Elizabethan collar, like those used by veterinarians to keep animals from reopening wounds, or perhaps a reflective collar or coat. They pointed to the animal’s gait and that it appears to be dragging a leash behind it along the ground as evidence in favor of this hypothesis. The thickness and relative immobility of its tail could be due to its breed; some dogs have thicker or fluffier tails, and many run with their tails trailing behind them rather than wagging back and forth.

"That is absolutely a dog's gait," one viewer noted. "It is a dog. I was thinking it'd gotten its head stuck in a jar or something, but I agree that an Elizabethan collar (aka cone of shame) makes more sense. Poor dog. Hope his/her people are in pursuit. Those e-collars confuse them because they can't tell the direction of sound or odor, so I hope he/she isn't lost."

If it is a dog, no one has yet come forward to claim ownership.

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