Pterosaur News for the Beginning of November
The first news is about a new site called “Zyc Pterozaura,” which is Polish for “live pterosaur.” It’s mostly about Whitcomb interviewing the three Lake-Pung eyewitnesses. The news is not in details about that sighting in the early 1990’s. It’s the fact that a site in the Polish language is mostly about this sighting of the ropen. If you’re interested in seeing this in that language:
W 2004 roku Jonathan Whitcomb zbadać wyspę. Umboi Island ma zwierzę latające. Nazywa się “ropen.” Większość świadków widać tylko światła latające. Kilku świadków było bliżej do zwierząt, że leci.
W 2004 roku Jonathan Whitcomb wywiady wielu naocznych świadków, w Papui Nowej Gwinei.
The third edition of Live Pterosaurs in America is now published. The extra pages added since the second edition have been at the back of the appendix, but they are significant. They are about the sighting by Patty Carson in Cuba, and one page has her sketch of what is coming to be called the “Gitmo Pterosaur.”
The book has a number of related sightings that were long ago published as news in at least one or two newspapers in central California. The following is taken from the book:
I cannot prove all the accounts were genuine, for they were recorded secondhand in the early 1890’s. . . . In the summer of 1891, southeast of Fresno, several eyewitnesses reported two featherless flying creatures with wingspans of fifteen feet. Reportedly reputable residents around Reedley described the two “dragons” for the newspaper: broad heads, long bills, and large eyes. “On the night of July 11 . . . their peculiar cries and the rustling of their mammoth wings were heard as late as 10 o’clock.” Two nights later, the “monsters” were held responsible for attacking chickens, with “many of the hens being bitten in two and left partly devoured.”
It could be difficult to sort out the truth from the fiction in those 19th century accounts in the newspapers. The feasibility of modern pterosaurs living in California is strengthened by recent eyewitness reports, however. I know of some news about possible pterosaurs being sited in San Fernando Valley, just a few years ago. The sightings were at night.
