Modern Pterosaur – Page 22 – Please join us: Investigate reports of modern living pterosaurs.

March 6, 2012March 20, 2012

Nineteenth Century Hoax

The hoax I mention is in an 1856 issue of The Illustrated London News, in the article about the pterodactyl that stumbled out of a railway tunnel after a drilling explosion or manual digging. I see little need to examine this old newspaper story, for the details point to a hoax, if I have learned those details correctly. I mention this now because of the writings of Glen Kuban, who seems to take this newspaper joke as if it were evidence that eyewitness accounts in general are hoaxes, or takes it as if it throws suspicion on all reported sightings of modern pterosaurs.

I don’t say that everything that Kuban says about reports of modern pterosaurs is wrong, but that he may do more harm than good by trying to convince people that pterosaurs all became extinct long ago. And one thing he probably does not understand, and this relates to that old London newspaper story, is that nineteenth century newspapers, when they carried joke-articles, may have been influenced by true stories that were not mentioned in the hoax-story articles.

I now refer to American newspaper articles in the nineteenth century, for a possible example, and I use the book Live Pterosaurs in America, in quoting:

Cryptozoology author Chad Arment wrote “The Pterodactyls of Fresno County, California” for the BioFortean Review (November 2006, No. 5). I include a summary of those newspaper accounts here . . .

I cannot prove all the accounts were genuine, for they were recorded secondhand in the early 1890’s. I suggest that at least some eyewitnesses were telling the truth, regardless of the opinions of the news reporters of that time, and that at least some eyewitnesses may have seen a living pterosaur. I do not submit these old reports as indisputable evidence to prove pterosaurs lived in the late nineteenth century; I submit them to dismiss any potential objection that twentieth century and twenty-first century reports of living pterosaurs in California are without historical precedence: Sightings continue.

The point is that when a newspaper in the nineteenth century printed a hoax story, the idea may have come from another newspaper that had printed a genuine story about an extraordinary sighting of a real pterosaur. The hoax articles do not prove or even lead one logically to assume that all articles on that same subject must be hoaxes.

But there’s something else. We need to be careful about extreme positions, and I don’t mean just pterosaur extinction itself, for there have been countless species living at some time in the past. Extreme positions about newspaper stories means blindly taking every one of them as if containing indisputable facts or taking every newspaper story about a pterosaur sighting as if must have been a hoax. Take each story, instead, by itself. If two or more newspaper accounts seem to relate, then take that into account. Just beware of extreme positions, for newspaper reports are human and hoaxers are not yet extinct.

Hoax Explanation for Living Pterosaurs

In 1856, according to The Illustrated London News (newspaper) at the time, men working on a tunnel in France discovered a living pterosaur (by whatever name). In 1890, according to the Tombstone Epitaph (newspaper) at the time, two Arizona ranchers shot a giant flying creature. What do these two accounts have in common? Each is now believed by many to be a hoax. But not all accounts of living pterosaurs can be easily dismissed as hoaxes.

Living Pterosaurs? Not by Glen Kuban

But Whitcomb’s web page does not go nearly far enough in emphasizing the testimonies of Brian Hennessy and Duane Hodgkinson. Glen Kuban’s web page ignores those two witnesses entirely. Hennessy and Hodgkinson witnessed “prehistoric” looking flying creatures in daylight, at fairly close range, with locations being Bougainville Island and the Finschhafen area, respectively, both in New Guinea, which is now the nation of Papua New Guinea.

Marfa Lights up in the Houston Chronicle

Large newspapers, the traditional backbone of major media, rarely publish ideas that contradict basic assumptions of the sociey in which they exist. It was no surprise when the Houston Chronicle’s December 19, 2010, print edition played to the audience with the article “What’s going on in Marfa?” published online on December 16. The subject was Marfa Lights. It played to the assumption that no “dinosaur” could live in Marfa, Texas.

March 2, 2012March 16, 2012

Why a Hoax Does not Explain Sightings

Again the subject of a hoax or hoaxes has come up in regard to accounts of modern pterosaurs. There seems to be no end of refutations for the “hoax hypothesis,” as it has been called. Statistics from years of eyewitness sighting reports disprove any generalized hoax explanation, for the degree of certainty in descriptions of featherlessness (if “featherlessness” is a word) fly in the face of those skeptics who use the word “hoax.”

But that is not exactly the direction I wish to take at present. I say we need to look at some of the key eyewitnesses of modern pterosaurs, look into why they might or might not play a hoax. First, we look at the psychologist Brian Hennessy.

In 1971, perhaps before Hennessy had a degree in psychology, I don’t know, he was on Bougainville Island, which is now part of the nation of Papua New Guinea. In his own words:

Our truck had stopped on our downward journey from the top of the range to the coast way below. The sound was amplified by the road-cutting into the mountain. That is, there was bare red/orange clay, rather than the surrounding jungle. I can’t remember why our vehicle had stopped. Maybe we had to wait for another vehicle to pass us. I don’t know. But I can still hear that slow flapping sound in the stillness of an early tropical morn, on the road from Panguna down to loloho on Bougainville Island in 1971.

When I looked up, trying to see what was making this sound, i saw a very unusual creature. Firstly, it was very big (wingspan at least 2 metres, probably more…possibly much , much more). I can’t remember the exact distance estimate that this creature was from me…let’s say about 50 metres above.

It was black or dark brown. I had never seen anything like it before. It certainly looked prehistoric, in that it did not look like any other bird that I have seen before or since. Why prehistoric? Well, maybe my memory has been influenced by the intervening years, but I recall seeing this creature with a longish narrow tail…almost like a counterweight that a kangaroo has, although not as large.

The body seemed to be quite narrow. However, the head was disproportionately large compared to the body (no feathers in sight). The wingspan was large. The head had no ‘normal’ beak. Rather there seemed to be (and this is difficult to describe) a kind of beak that was indistinguishable from the head, and the head seemed to continue this ‘point’ at the back of the head.

I’ll explain why I have brought up this particular sighting. When Hennessy reported his experience, in 2006, he was a professional psychologist. I believe that he still is. But why would he agree to have his real name be used in cryptozoology literature, if he was playing a hoax? It would likely come back to haunt him in his profession.

A skeptic might say that reporting a live pterosaur could come back to haunt you. But Hennessy did not say that he had observed a live pterosaur. He simply described it. He did not say that there could not have been any feather on that creature. He simply told us that he saw no sign of any feather. He was not trying to convince everybody that he had observed a modern pterosaur, but he was simply reported his observation. He was obviously not playing a hoax.

Second, we look at Paul Nation, a cryptozoologist-explorer, who explored in Papua New Guinea at least four times. If he had any desire to play a hoax, why has he said nothing about personally observing anything like any pterosaur? He tries to let people know about the possibility of the existence of modern pterosaurs, so why has he not lied and said that he did see a pterosaur? Surely it is because he is honest and simply reports what eyewitnesses have told him and what he personally observed in distant flying lights. That brings us to the final point: Honest people do not play pterosaur hoaxes.

No Hoax With Pterosaur Sightings

Evelyn Cheesman was a biologist who searched for insects and small animals in remote areas, including New Guinea, in the 1920′s and 1930′s. In fact, some of her discoveries put her name to some of those creatures, including Lipinia cheesmanae—a skink (lizard), and Litoria cheesmani—a treefrog.

Cheesman’s successes in biology are worthy of praise, but what about her observations of strange flying lights? They resemble the strange flying lights observed by Paul Nation, miles south of where Cheesman saw them. She was no cryptozoologist and was surely not playing a hoax when she wrote about her observations in her book The Two Roads of Papua.

Other eyewitnesses could be mentioned, but the point is that a generalized hoax hypothesis cannot touch all of the sighting reports, therefore any critic who wishes to be thorough must find some other explanation or admit the possibility of modern pterosaurs.

February 25, 2012

New Mexico and Texas

Wild animals pay no attention to human borders, unless a fence hinders them. But fences are generally ignored by animals that fly, so what’s the difference between New Mexico and Texas? Western Texas in particular should not seem much different from New Mexico, to flying animals. I find reports of “pterodactyls” in these areas interesting.

From the book Live Pterosaurs in America:

“I live in central N.M.. Fourteen years ago, in [Socorro], N.M., me and a close friend, who now has a masters in biology, were hiking during the midday sun at [a] box canyon and something blocked the sun for a moment. We both looked up to see what did that and saw a large flying animal.

“It had a 20-30 foot wingspan and was about the same length long. It had a long tail with [a] seeming spike at the end. Its head was very pterodactyl shape with a fluted back pointy head. It glided at about 700 feet in a westward direction. . . . we watched it glide . . . and land somewhere on the southern expanse of Magdalena Mountains.”

The fact that the two eyewitnesses saw this creature in the middle of the day does not necessarily mean that it was not nocturnal. When an animal that is normally active at night is disturbed during the day, it can well become temporarily active.

Although most sightings of reported pterosaurs in Texas are not with estimated wingspans as large as this one in New Mexico, size does come into play, sometimes, in attracting the attention of eyewitnesses.

Sightings in Texas

A lady and her brother, in San Antonia one evening in 1986, saw something flying around across the road, a little above the phone lines. “It would go one direction, turn, and swoop back. The shape was wrong for any large bird of the area, and the size was much too large to be any bat . . .”