John LeMay
Even though the 'Golden Age of Newspapers' came to an end in the early 20th Century, tales of dinosaurian monsters remained in print. Plus, with photographic evidence of mystery creatures like Nessie and Bigfoot emerging, not to mention the new science of cryptozoology, perhaps the idea of remnant dinosaurs wasn’t so strange after all. This new tome in the Cowboys & Saurians series sets out to explore North America’s more notable dinosaur and cryptid encounters of the modern era. From Nebraska’s Walgren Lake Monster fiasco of the Roaring Twenties to the Minnesota Ice Man of the Swinging Sixties all the way up to the Colorado River Dinosaur phenomenon of the early 2000s, this tome hits all the high points. After reading this book, you’ll ask yourself: Was a North Dakota farmer’s account of nearly being run off the road by a dinosaur in 1934 inspired by the Arthur Grant Loch Ness account of the same year, or was it a genuine close-call with a cryptid? Was the 'vampire' Beast of Bladenboro a run-of-the-mill varmint, or a supernatural shapeshifter out for blood? Was the animal behind the Texas 'Big Bird' Flap of 1976 a pterosaur? Did starved, Depression-Era Wisconsinites take to eating a race of rare, pygmy mastodons? Was the infamous Glacier Island carcass of the 1930s a dinosaur or a whale? Why did a Churubusco, Indiana, farmer nearly go bankrupt trying to prove the existence of a titanic turtle? Was Kentucky’s Milton Lizard a descendant of Ohio’s Crosswicks Monster? And, finally, what does an 1892 Iguanodon sighting at Devil’s Hole have to do with a lost city of giants found under the sands of Death Valley in 1947?