Modern Pterosaur – Page 23 – Please join us: Investigate reports of modern living pterosaurs.

February 22, 2012February 23, 2012

“Pterodactyl Expert”

I sometimes refer to postings on the blog Pterosaur Eyewitness, and I now tackle the controversy in “Jonathan Whitcomb: Pterodactyl Expert.” I will not get into any of the controversy on religion. Actually the subject of religion is not covered in depth, but that is what apparently elicited the critical comments on the original cryptozoology.com forum.

Regarding the fossils of pterosaurs, Whitcomb is nothing like a paleontologist. He probably could not tell the species of a fossil of one if he dug it up himself. He is a cryptozoologist who interviews eyewitnesses of what many call “pterodactyls,” which is simply the name many non-paleontologists use for “pterosaur.” He searches for the eyewitnesses who think that they have seen modern pterosaurs, and he tries to figure out if they misidentified a bird or a bat or if they saw what they think that they did.

Popular Paleontology

Within the popular concepts of paleontology, Whitcomb’s writings about modern pterosaurs appear ridiculous. In that sense, he could not possibly be an expert on pterosaurs. But the original title for the cryptozoology.com discussion was “Jonathan Whitcomb: Pterodactyl Expert.” The word “pterodactyl,” in this sense, refers to the layman’s expression, not the paleontologist’s. Since common people report seeing modern “pterodactyls,” and cryptozoologists like Whitcomb interview them and believe most of those common eyewitnesses, Whitcomb is an expert. But of course that is in the sense that modern pterosaurs could be living among humans.

So what does all this boil down to? If all pterosaurs (AKA pterodactyls) are extinct, nobody whose experiences are confined to eyewitnesses can be an expert, even if he writes books on the subject, like Whitcomb has done. But if even just one of the eyewitnesses has actually seen a modern pterosaur, then Whitcomb is an expert, having interviewed perhaps more eyewitnesses than any other cryptozoologist. Of course with all that said, the existence of modern pterosaurs does not necessarily mean that all of his ideas are correct.

Pterodactyl Expert?

But is there such a thing as a pterodactyl expert? The subject came up recently online.

February 9, 2012February 13, 2012

Head of a Pterosaur

The following blog post, “Pterosaur Head,” shows two survey pages given to the eyewitness Duane Hodgkinson, in regard to the length of the head crest of his “pterodactyl.” Other examples could be cited. Those images given to Hodgkinson may have been very unlike the head of the creature he saw in 1944. More instructive is the sketch drawn by the eyewitness Patty Carson, showing details on the head crest of the pterosaur she saw in Cuba in 1965. I say “pterosaur” because there is no reasonable doubt in regard to misidentification potential.

Gitmo Pterosaur sketched by eyewitness Patty Carson

The is no doubt about the basic nature of this structure at the back of the head of this pterosaur. It cannot be a snake hanging out of the creature’s mouth. We do not need to imagine what the eyewitness meant by what she said about this head crest. Who cares about the word or words she used to describe it? She has provided us with a clear sketch of the head and head crest.

More on the 1965 Sighting in Cuba

. . . in Patty Carson’s testimony . . . “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.

Marfa Lights in Texas

But eyewitnesses who have been brave enough to report a living pterosaur themselves live in various statesof the U.S.A., including various parts of Texas and in New Mexico. Many of these sightings resemble those in Papua New Guinea: feather-less flying creatures with head crests and long tails

February 4, 2012

Validity of Sightings at Night

A recent post on the “Live Pterosaur” blog was about the credibility of sightings at night. I will not quote much of that post here, but I would like to add more ammunition, more eyewitness sightings.

Two Eyewitnesses See Two Pterosaurs in Florida

According to the nonfiction book Live Pterosaurs in America, a man in Florida saw, in 2008, at about 2:30 a.m., two small pterosaurs flying over houses in the neighborhood. The man’s friend also saw the creatures that had no feathers, a pointed beak, and a “long pointed thing protruding from the back of its head.”

What is not mentioned in that post is that the first flying creature was illuminated by a flood light, making it clearly visible at a close distance.

“Pterdactyl Attacks”

Regarding the report mentioned in the above link, why believe that modern pterosaurs were involved in these attacks? For one thing, birds and bats don’t usually attack people at night. For another, the pterosaurs that attack people in British Columbia do not always kill people. Some victims survive to tell other people about the attacks. The closeness of the encounters, involving attacks, goes without saying, and closeness means the person being attacked gets a close view of the attacker.

San Antonio, Texas, Pterosaur at Night

I quote from the book Live Pterosaurs in America:

“One evening, I was outside my apartment building . . . talking to my brother. . . . We were very used to the normal nightly activities of the area. We knew what the local birds and bats looked like . . . My dad and I had, on several occasions, noticed bats flying right near our heads . . . Neither my brother or I was prone to being scared by anything outside at night. This night was different. We noticed something flying around across the road from where we were . . . the creature was flying just 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 I have ever seen (I have seen a flying fox in a zoo, too, once with wings spread). The wingspan was huge, anywhere from 6-10 feet across. We watched the thing for maybe twenty minutes or so . . .

This sighting in San Antonio is important, for two eyewitnesses, familiar with local birds and bats, realized that a flying creature was too much unlike any bird or bat. I sense that this sighting may not have as high a credibility as other sightings at night, but should be considered more than zero credibility, when taken in context with the many other sightings of modern pterosaurs, in Texas and out, in the night and in the daytime.

Flying Creature of the Night

I recall part of a comment from a critic, some years ago, ridiculing the credibility of eyewitnesses who “misidentify” birds or bats at night. But he was only tossing out a generalization, assuming that all reported sightings (those encounters that serious invesigators publicize) all fit neatly into his mental image of a dark landscape where people imagine that birds and bats are pterosaurs. Science thrives on details of human experience, so let’s examine particular sightings.

The above blog post mentions night sightings in Sudan, Africa, in San Diego, California, and in Ohio. More could be said about more sightings in other areas of the world.