Living Pterosaurs in North Carolina
By the modern-pterosaur expert Jonathan Whitcomb
Look not to a biology professor at a university, if you should be one of the lucky ones who has seen an apparent living pterosaur in states like South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, or North Carolina (or any other state or country). Contact me to report the flying creature you encountered.
I’ve written about sightings in N.C. before: what some eyewitnesses often label one of the following:
- pterodactyl
- prehistoric bird
- dragon
- dinosaur bird
To be correct in a technical sense, pterosaur is the name for many of the animals that people see, when they send me reports of their sightings. How can I say that, in a culture in which those flying creatures are thought to have become extinct many millions of years ago? Sighting reports from around the world have been sent to me over the past 15 years, and those eyewitnesses come from a number of cultures, countries, languages, religions, and their backgrounds have been varied. The best explanation, by far, for the similarities in their descriptions of the flying creatures, is that they have seen living animals that are descended from pterosaurs closely related to pterosaurs that the paleontologists know about from fossils.
Sighting Reports from North Carolina
Let’s look at a few of the eyewitness reports from N. C., with only excerpts of what has been sent to me.
The following is from an email that I received on March 16, 2018:
I live in Mebane, North Carolina which is about 50 miles or so west of Raleigh. Tonight while on my way home, on a back road, something strange in the sky caught my attention. It was a huge flying creature. It was towards dusk so I was unable to see distinct outlines but as it flew over the road, about half block in front of me, I could clearly see that its wing span covered more than both lanes of the road. My first thought was something related to a prehistoric bird. . . .
The eyewitness is not anonymous and the encounter not from decades ago in some remote jungle on the far side of the planet. Anita Gibson has allowed me to give you her actual name, and her sighting was on the same day that she sent me the report: March 16, 2018. The flying creature was in North Carolina.
Now for an apparent pterosaur in Murray’s Mill, in that same state. The encounter was around the fall of 2016.
I was walking with my sister, just exploring the water and an old house under restoration. It flew about 30-40 ft. above the the water and was scanning the water for something to eat. It was soaring mostly, it only flapped it’s wings a few times. . . .
She gives a few more details on the appearance of that flying creature but not enough to convince everybody that it was a pterosaur. Now for another report that I got from an eyewitness in North Carolina:
My brother and I spotted a Pterodactyl flying maybe 25 feet above tree level in Conover, North Carolina. This hairless, birdlike creature looked exactly like a Pterodactyl. If I had to put a guess on its wing span, I’d say 10 ft. It had a very long beak that was just as long as the back part of it’s head. I could even see little hands on its wings. I don’t understand how this creature still exists. It makes you wonder where does this animal roost and even more scarier, what is its diet. I’m sure this was a once in a lifetime sighting. My brother and I stared at this thing in awe . . .
I am in awe of these wonderful flying creatures that are seen around the world and even in the towns and countryside of North Carolina.
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Pterosaur 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.
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Most of the following are from direct eyewitness testimony sent to the cryptozoologist Jonathan Whitcomb, who now lives in Murray, Utah.
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Modern pterosaurs in North Carolina and in Virginia
I saw what I saw in October 2009, in Charlotte, North Carolina. . . . It was at night. I was standing outside my car . . . when I saw the creature emerge directly over the three-story building I was standing next to. The creature was so close [that] my reflex was to duck. It looked like what I had seen in a Jurassic Park movie.
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These 161 reports are only a tiny fraction of the actual encounters American have had with apparent living pterosaurs over the past few decades. The actual number could be a thousand times that many.
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For years people in Georgia have seen flying things unlike birds, sometimes creatures with long tails and no feathers and too big to be a bat. Sometimes a person will notice something like a head crest at the back of the creature’s head . . .
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Pterosaur alive in South Carolina
One of the first detailed pterosaur sighting reports that I received from a state of the USA was the encounter by Susan Wooten in South Carolina.