Sightings – Page 9 – Modern Pterosaur

July 12, 2013September 4, 2013

Sighting in Raleigh, North Carolina

I was going over a report of a pterosaur sighting in North Carolina and noticed similarities with Susan Wooten’s sighting in South Carolina. There are also differences.

Date of Sighting

NC: March 23, 2013
SC: about fall of 1989

Size of Flying Creature in Wingspan

NC: 5-6 feet
SC: 12-15 feet

Feathers or not

NC: “NO feathers”
SC: “NO feathers”

Conditions and Time

NC: driving on a highway at sundown
SC: driving on a highway at about 3 p.m.

How High Above Highway?

NC: “about 7 or 8 feet off the ground”
SC: “probably 20 ft or so” (above the highway)

Tail Details

NC: “a LONG tail with a spade at the end”
SC: “long, long tail”

Head of Flying Creature

NC: “enormous pointed beak, with a pointed top of it’s head.”
SC: “Big thing coming out of its forehead like a boomerang, and also the same in the back.”

We could just as well compare this sighting in North Carolina with other sightings in the eastern states of the USA. Many eyewitnesses have reported a large flying creature with a long tail but no feathers. Some report a “diamond” or similar structure at tail-end, and some report a head crest.

The March-2013 sighting in North Carolina needs to be taken in perspective in relation to other sightings in North America. Details in these reports need to be compared and evaluated.

Pterosaur Sighting in North Carolina

When somebody reports a pterosaur sighting in Raleigh, North Carolina, we can expect objections from skeptics. That’s what we got earlier this year, on a musicians’ forum.

Pterosaur Sightings in North Carolina and Spain

. . . saw something HUGE above me in the sky. It looked like a pale greenish white and smooth-skinned. It didn’t appear to have any feathers, and it had the tail with the diamond shape on the end.

Cover of the third edition of "Live Pterosaurs in America" by Whitcomb

Live Pterosaurs in America (nonfiction cryptozoology book)

From page 124 of the book:

“I saw two pterosaurs . . . flying together at low altitude, perhaps 100 feet, very close in range from where I was standing, so that I had a perfectly clear view of them. . . .

The rhythm of their large wings was very graceful, slow, and yet they were flying and not merely gliding . . .”

The marine observed details, later recording them in his sketch: The head was large in proportion, with a large head crest; the short “hind legs” were attached to the trailing part of the wings; the vertebrae were noticeable; the end of the tail had a “tuft of hair.”

June 10, 2013September 4, 2013

Perching Pterosaur, not Woodpecker

Dale A. Drinnon has another explanation for pterosaur sightings in Southern California. He now says it’s a woodpecker. In his blog post “Living Pterosaurs of Hollywood,” he says:

This sounds like possibly another series of sightings of an outsized woodpecker similar to the Ivory-billed woodpecker, already suspected from “Pteranodon” sightings from further North in California and in Oregon. There is a larger species related to the Ivory-Billed woodpecker native to Mexico but it is thought to be extinct. The creature which is reported as a pterosaur perches upright, which no kind of a pterosaur could do.

I’d better explain the context. Drinnon says that after what looks like a quote, but I haven’t been able to find the source, after I Googled on his text. Maybe he was quoting correctly. If he did, with “Jonathan David Whitcomb states on Facebook” then I accept that is what was written on Facebook. It relates to the May 13th sighting this year, a little southeast of Griffith Park. The animal was called a pterosaur by the eyewitness and she said that it had no feathers but it did have a head crest.

Here are some problems with what Drinnon has said:

He said “perching” but the May 13th sighting had a “pterosaur” flying over a freeway. It did not perch.
He said no kind of pterosaur can perch but the kind that is often reported in Southern California looks like a member of Rhamphornynchoidea, which could perch.
He said a woodpecker could be what is being seen, but almost all sightings are of much larger flying creatures, far bigger than any woodpecker.
He said sightings in Southern California are related to “Pteranodon sightings” further north in California and in Oregon but he does not say why those might be related to sightings in Southern California.
He thinks the head crest mentioned by the May 13th eyewitness is the same thing as what some woodpeckers have, but she chose only pterosaur images from a survey. Drinnon says nothing about that survey.
He thinks none of the eyewitnesses are capable of determining that they had seen flying creatures that were not birds. Why does Drinnon think he can judge all those persons when his own judgment has not been sufficiently proven? Has he even questioned any eyewitness of a strange flying creature?

Does a Pterosaur Perch?

It could be that Drinnon was thinking about the Lakewood, California, sighting that happened last June, in 2012. The eyewitness said that the “dragon-pterodactyl” was perched on a telephone cable just a little overhead. But she also described a long tail with a “triangle” at tail end, as I recall. That would make it the type of pterosaur that had digits on the feet that could perch, for that would be a basal pterosaur.

Dragons or Pterosaurs Over Interstate-5

Right between the Los Angeles River and Griffith Park—that’s where the three “dragons” were flying on March 3, 2013, at 6:10 a.m., but another driver on the I-5 Freeway saw one “pterosaur” ten weeks later, just a little over a mile south of the first sighting location.

California Ropens – Are They Woodpeckers?

Immediately after mentioning the woodpecker interpretation of pterosaur sightings in California, the skeptic said, “The creature which is reported as a pterosaur perches upright, which no kind of a pterosaur could do.” Well, that old generalization no longer applies, for we now know that one type of pterosaur could indeed perch upright, and that long-tailed variety just happens to be . . . yes, the same general type observed perching upright on a telephone line in Lakewood, California, on June 19, 2012: the long-tailed variety.

April 5, 2013January 24, 2017

Civil War Pteranodon Photograph

*Important Update on “Ptp” Civil War Photo

In January of 2017, the physicist Clifford Paiva and I agreed that this old photograph has a valid image of a modern pterosaur. Please see the more recent post that was published on the Modern Pterosaur blog: “Civil War Pterodactyl Photo.” What follows is the older post on this subject, written before critically important discoveries and announcements in early 2017.

The Original April-2013 Post

This may be the hot topic now, so I’ll pitch in. This old looking photo shows a few Union soldiers and a large pterosaur that we’re led to believe was shot by those men. The big question is whether or not this is an accurate version of a real photographic recording during the Civil War. I’ll be honest, I don’t know*.

I read a comment somewhere, on some forum thread, about this photo. Somebody said that if some soldiers really had seen a giant pterosaur then it would have gotten into the newspapers. I disagree. Back then, newspaper editors would not take hold of a monster story when there were so many war stories to write about. Some huge bird would not have been nearly as interesting as how the latest battle had gone.

I think this photo has been around a long time. I also think I know something about why people might not believe it’s a real photo. I mean in recent years. People just assume it’s another fake. For years now we’re been bombarded by fakery in photos and in videos, so it makes it easy to turn away from this Civil War photo.

The wings look a little like canoes, too. That just about does it in. But if people would think about it a little deeper they would realize there may be more to this photo. It is either a Photoshop fake or an old fake by the soldiers themselves. I don’t think it’s both. So if it’s some kind of hoax, which one is it?

It’s a little too good to have been made by those soldiers, except for those wings. And it’s hard to believe that a modern Photoshop hoaxer would put two canoes into the picture as if they were wings. That makes this photograph a real mystery. Maybe it’s a real Pteranodon with wings that became twisted over many days after the animal’s death.

Photograph of a Modern Pterosaur?

Let’s assume somebody decided to make a hoax photo of a convincing recently-deceased Pteranodon. Using Photoshop, how would a hoaxer make it convincing? Would he use an image of a dugout canoe for the wings of the giant pterosaur? Not likely. Would he use or construct anything looking like an image of dugout canoe? Not likely.

Destination Truth Ropen Episode

As a nocturnal creature, the ropen’s defining characteristic is the glow it reportedly emits from its stomach and tail.