To pin it down further, have a discussion about politics with it. The Newt, of course, is a Republican. 
Closer to Breckenridge actually, about 12 miles south, 11,200 feet. Your out by Canon City then. Cool area. We almost bought land near Silver Cliff.
Seems odd to find a lizard in the mountains. I sure have never seen one.
It’s not a lizard, it is a salamander; an amphibian like a frog.
It’s an amphibian, not a lizard (reptile).
I thought it was odd as well, but then, there are a lot of oddities in the mountains…like no snow plows but 40 ton graders to remove snow…weird.
And yes, it’s an amphibian, like a frog. And with last nights 39 degrees, it’s probably well into finding a place to hibernate.
Has anyone considered that it’s not a lizard, it’s an amphibian? I bet it likes rock music, particularly Rio, by Duran Duran.
But is it a 1920s style amphibian?
We’re old. I’m glad we’re still around to amuse each other with truly outdated Doper Jokes, Inigo.
Technically, there’s no such thing as a “reptile” any more, though what we learned in fifth grade as “amphibians” still is a valid group – “Lissamphibia”: extant tetrapods that didn’t develop the amniote egg, a valid clade. But evolutionarily and physiologically, crocodilians, lizards and snakes, turtles, and the tuatara have nothing in common with each other that they do not also share with mammals and birds; they’re not a valid group, “*Reptilia”. The closet living relative of a crocodilian (other than other crocodilians, of course) is a bird, probably a paleognath such as the cassowary.
Next thing you’ll say is that Pluto isn’t a planet…
I’m not sure about other reptiles, but Western Fence Lizards are pretty common in the mountains up to 10,000 ft. They survive the winters by brumationas opposed to hibernation.
It’s a young tiger salamander. Full-grown tigers can be over 12 inches long. They are found throughout Colorado except in the highest elevations. They (along with spotted salamanders and some others) are members of a group called mole salamanders. As the name implies, they spend most of their time underground. They breed in ponds in early spring, often when there is still ice around the edges.
I wanna live somewhere that is described by the altitude.
No, “Reptile” can still a term describing those tetrapods that are within the one big terrestrial tetrapod clade & out of the amphibian, bird (or bird/dino), & mammal clades. Or, you know, function as a descriptive (not cladisitc) category, which is what it was in the first place. I would suggest for non-amphib non-mammal vertebrate tetrapods with “reptile” limb joints as opposed to “dino/bird” limb joints, but I guess some dinos are still considered borderline reptilian.
You cladistics guys have an overly narrow approach to semantics.
Technically, reptile is a perfectly good term to use when talking about snakes, turtles, lizards, crocodilians, tuataras and even amphisbaenians. I have a hard time imagining a herpetologist saying that he studies non-avian, non-mammalian amniotes. Of course, it would depend on whether he wanted to convey useful information or obfuscate with pedantry.
Maybe, but the real question is : is he still a dog ?
Don’t all the reptiles share the 2-lobed reptilian brain structure? I that feature not enough to tie them together cladistically?
Or is there no such commonality, and all I thought I knew about brain evolution is wrong?
Seconded. I remember driving home at dusk one summer night. Someone said, “What’s that funny noise? … What are we running over? … What the hell?” There were literally hundreds of the things walking slowly across the road. I felt sorry for the poor buggers. My sister’s kids kept two of them in an aquarium filled with moist dirt for a couple years or more. They do indeed spend a lot of time underground.
I fully concur. I tilled one up (around 10" long) late-Spring when prepping a garden area and since I had no idea the things were native here, I was amazed at the sudden appearance of a huge shiny black/yellow ‘thing’ in the dirt. No injury and it just kinda rambled away - until I plopped it into a cooler to take in and show wife/daughter. That should’ve been on video with all the “WTF is that!!!” I heard (girls, geeeeessh…) The nearest body of any water was probably a mile away, so full-time water isn’t a huge thing for older ones, it would seem.
The critter now resides around our ~100g in-ground ‘pond’ after being released there unharmed. It quickly dug a hole/burrow that I was able to measure at being at least 24" deep - no telling how deep/long it is overall. Impressive beast, imho. Afaik, it is still amongst the rocks lining the pond with the bullfrogs and other expected critters.
Amphibaweb has lots of pictures and range charts that could narrow down the exact variety of salamander.