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Scott Norman Pterosaur Sighting

From the second edition of the book Live Pterosaurs in America, we read:

A few months after my late-2004 expedition in Papua New Guinea, I met Scott Norman. My associate, Garth Guessman, introduced me to this cryptozoologist who had explored in central Africa, searching for the Mokele-mbembe. Scott never saw the Mokele dinosaur in Africa, but two years after I met him he became, I believe, the first American cryptozoologist to observe the clear form of a living pterosaur while searching for one.

The person speaking here is the author, Jonathan Whitcomb. For copyright reasons, I will not quote too extensively from the book. But I can say that Scott Norman was skeptical, in July of 2007, when another cryptozoologist convinced him to help them search a secret location in the United States, where one or more pterosaur-like flying creatures were reported to fly at night.

He realized the location was close to the residence an old friend in that state, so he agreed to go. After arriving at the search area, he examined part of a video that the other cryptozoologists had recently recorded one night; they thought it might be a pterosaur, but Norman thought it more likely to have been a bird.

This means that Norman was not biased in favor of a modern pterosaur when he stayed up one night to take his turn watching for the flying creature. What he saw flying over a shed he observed with an open mind, not making any hasty conclusions from any emotional state of mind.

I think it appropriate to quote what some other cryptozoologists, besides Whitcomb, have said about Scott Norman and about his sighting of a possible pterosaur.

Chad Arment Quotes Scott Norman:

I was sitting in a chair, sideways towards the shed looking up at the starry skies, when this animal came gliding just over the shed and into the field and then I lost it. I did not tell them about the sighting until later that morning, I had to sleep on and think about what I saw.

The animal I saw had an 8-10 foot wing span, the wings were bat-like in shape, the inside had that wavy type of look. The body was about 5-6 feet in length, the neck about 1-2 feet in length, the head was about four feet in length, and the head was key for me: it has a crest that was about 2 feet in length, fit that of a pteranodon, don’t know how else to describe it. Our contact had a similar type of sighting three years ago in daylight. In his sighting he saw a long tail, I did not see one, and all of the pteranodon pictures I’ve seen show a real short stubby one. The animal I saw was stockier compared to some of the drawings of pterosaurs I’ve seen. The animal in the video that’s supposed to be a pterosaur and the animal I saw are two different animals.

The Passing of a Great Cryptozoologist

The cryptozoological community was shocked and saddened at the death of Scott T. Norman. He passed away on February 29, 2008, just two weeks before he would have turned forty-four.

Loren Coleman:

Scott T. Norman was one of the good guys in cryptozoology. When not involved with his cryptozoology, his work, or his church, Scott was also a First Responder, Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) and, for example, was activated and helped out at the Irvine Wildfire last fall in California.

Scott was a deeply religious man whose faith was with him always, and who was calm and intelligent. He will not be able to return to Africa, but Africa had become part of him. I am glad he was able to live his dreams before he left us.

I am totally in shock and send out my empathy, sympathy, and sorrow to his friendly family.

Scott, keep searching.

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front cover of the non-fiction book Live Pterosaurs in AmericaLive Pterosaurs in America, by Jonathan Whitcomb

Second edition published November 20, 2010

How are sightings in the United States related to those in the southwest Pacific? How do some apparent nocturnal pterosaurs pertain to bats, and how are bats irrelevant? How could modern living pterosaurs have escaped scientific notice? These mysteries have slept in the dark, beyond the knowledge of almost all Americans, even beyond our wildest dreams (although the reality of some pterosaurs is a living nightmare to some bats). These mysteries have slept . . . until now.

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Giant Pterosaur Between Australia and Indonesia

In 2008, a Britten-Norman Islander airplane, a fairly light plane having two engines, was being flown by two very experienced former navy-pilots. They were mostly done with flying from Australia to Indonesia, being at 6500 feet altitude and over the sea, when the pilot saw something coming straight at him, on a collision course. He thought it must have been another plane, somehow at the wrong altitude for that heading. He put his plane into a dive, catching the attention of the copilot, who had been looking down at a chart or something. The approaching flyer also dived, so the pilot banked to the left, saving them all from disaster.

What set apart this near collision from other emergencies was what happened in the brief seconds when the other flyer passed by the Britten-Norman Islander: The two men saw it flap its wings; obviously it was no plane.

Both men said the same word at the same time: “pterodactyl.” This is not to say that those pilots were anxious to promote the concept of non-extinction of pterosaurs, for they made it clear, in their communications with the cryptozoologist Jonathan Whitcomb, that they were not taking any position on any interpretation of what they saw. In other words, they were not biased in favor of a pterosaur interpretation. But they could find no other logical explanation for it, even though some people would think a modern pterosaur illogical.

The pilot was serious enough about the pterosaur possibility that he phoned Whitcomb to report the encounter, which was a recent encounter.

Possible Ropen off Indonesian Coast

The incident was 150 miles southeast of Bali, Indonesia. It was reported, in August of 2008, by the pilot, to the investigator Jonathan Whitcomb.

According to the second edition of the book Searching for Ropens (by Whitcomb), the bat-like flying creature that has a monkey face is called “ahool.” Apparently it eats fresh-water fish. One eyewitness described a head crest and an upright posture on tree trunks; a ropen of Umboi Island has also been seen to hold itself upright on a tree trunk.

Ropen Over Indonesia

The pilot saw the creature for about 5-6 seconds; the co-pilot, for only about 2-3 seconds. The co-pilot later reported that a common explanation–pelican–has problems: What the two ex-navy pilots had seen was too big and the wrong color (darker than the pelicans he knows live there).

Dinosaur Bird or Pterosaur

A “dinosaur bird” is actually what some eyewitnesses call a living pterosaur. These flying creatures have been observed all over the world, but they seem to be nocturnal, at least for the most part.

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Giant Pterosaur in New Mexico

I refer to an eyewitness sighting report in the second edition of Live Pterosaurs in America, by Jonathan Whitcomb, copyright 2010.

“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 . . . 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.”

It was interesting to me that the man related another sighting, about one month later, at the same place and about the same time of day and under the same conditions.

New Mexico Pterosaurs, Living in 19th Centuries

From “Weird New Mexico” (web site):

One man, Leroy Jones, used to talk about area ranchers in the late-1800s who swore they had seen pterosaurs — reptilian and enormous and startlingly alive — swooping over the desert hills and scrub brush of New Mexico’s southwestern Boot Heel.

New Mexico is just west of Texas, and Western Texas has a mystery, weird flying lights, that may relate to living pterosaurs in North America:

Mysterious Marfa Lights

Since early 2010, substantial circumstantial evidence has accumulated for the hypothesis that the more-mysterious of the flying lights around Marfa, Texas, are caused by the bioluminescence of a group of flying predators, unclassified by science.

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front cover of the non-fiction book Live Pterosaurs in AmericaLive Pterosaurs in America, by Jonathan Whitcomb

Second edition published November 20, 2010

How are sightings in the United States related to those in the southwest Pacific? How do some apparent nocturnal pterosaurs pertain to bats, and how are bats irrelevant? How could modern living pterosaurs have escaped scientific notice? These mysteries have slept in the dark, beyond the knowledge of almost all Americans, even beyond our wildest dreams (although the reality of some pterosaurs is a living nightmare to some bats). These mysteries have slept . . . until now.

image_pdfimage_print