Gitmo Pterosaur Revisited
Getting back to pterosaurs in Cuba, I noticed something interesting in Patty Carson’s testimony. She said, “It had little teeth, a LOT of them.” Well, Rhamphorhynchoids had teeth and long tails, generally, and the Gitmo pterosaur does as well, even though Eskin Kuhn did not see any teeth in the mouths of the two that he saw. That does make sense. Carson saw a winged creature on the ground, and she thought it had been eating or resting just before it stood up to look at her and her brother; she saw teeth in a mouth that was slightly open. Kuhn saw two winged creatures flying with their mouths closed; he saw no teeth. This difference in what was observed makes perfect sense in context with each sighting, for each saw a very different pterosaur activity.
For those coming upon this subject for the first time, modern pterosaurs in Cuba, I refer to two previous posts I wrote on this subject:
Two Pterosaur Sightings in Cuba
Patty Carson, has kindly agreed to having her real name used to substantiate her sighting and to support the Marine’s account of his sighting.
The Gitmo (Guantanamo Bay military base) had modern Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs, at least a few decades ago, so the Caribbean may still host such a “flying dinosaur.” I use that non-technical phrase in this post, for those flying creatures, because Patty Carson probably used that phrase or one like it.
I think it timely to display the original sketch by Kuhn.
I notice something strange or at least unusual in the way the legs relate to the wing-structure. It has been suggested by one skeptic that this unorthodox feature should caste doubt on the validity of Kuhn’s sighting, that no pterosaur had that kind of feature. In a similar way, we could reject all future discoveries of fossils of pterosaurs, if all of those discoveries included new features or aspects that had not been observed on the fossils previously discovered. In other words, has paleontology really progressed to the stage where there are no longer any new discoveries to be made? I think not. If that strange structure with wing membranes connecting to legs were found in a newly discovered fossil, it would be exciting to paleontologists, not causing any of them to automatically dismiss the fossil as a fraud or hoax.
I also noticed what Carson wrote after looking at Kuhn’s sketch: “The proportions of the head are very good, and the body and the hind legs are exactly as I remember.” It seems to me that this supports Kuhn’s depiction of the way the wings attach to the legs.
The pterosaurs seen by U.S. Marine Eskin Kuhn, in 1971, in Cuba, may be related to the kongamato of Africa.