Modern Pterosaur – Page 44 – Please join us: Investigate reports of modern living pterosaurs.

December 28, 2010January 30, 2013

Marfa Lights up in the Houston Chronicle

The Houston Chronicle is the largest daily newspaper in the state of Texas, the ninth largest in the United States, according to Wikipedia. Large newspapers, the traditional backbone of major media, rarely publish ideas that contradict basic assumptions of the society 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.

The article was elicited by a press release by Jonathan Whitcomb, part of a national promotion for his new book, the second edition of Live Pterosaurs in America. The Houston Chronicle gave no details about that press release, giving no quotations from it. It mentioned two scientists, James Bunnell and Karl Stephan, both of whom seem to have dismissed the possibility of modern pterosaurs. Neither Bunnel nor Stephan is a biologist.

Whitcomb’s idea of bioluminescent flying predators, perhaps even living pterosaurs, as an explanation for some of the mystery lights of Marfa, was dismissed, but there’s more: His qualifications for making that suggestion were questioned, to put it mildly.

While Whitcomb has been effective in broadcasting his views, he acknowledges that he has no scientific training, has never been to Marfa and has not seen the creatures whose patterns and habits he attempts to describe. He did make a trip to Papua New Guinea to investigate flying predators there but saw none.

The writer of the Houston Chronicle article, Claudia Feldman, seems to have overlooked an important part of science: the theoretical scientist. Like a detective who questions eyewitnesses and pieces together ideas based on what eyewitnesses have said, the theoretical scientist does not necessarily need to be an eyewitness, especially when eyewitnesses are plentiful or especially trustworthy. One name that comes to mind is Albert Einstein. He had limited, if any, training in physics; he had never been to an area where there was a total solar eclipse; he never saw the physics experiments that caused him to work at his theories. But he trusted the data from the experiments of those scientists who worked hands-on with scientific equipment.

That is not to say that Whitcomb is an Einstein. I only suggest that the writer of that article in the Houston Chronicle misses an important point, and she could have dismissed Einstein as unqualified, if she had lived and had written newspaper articles in Europe about a century ago.

I suggest that Claudia Feldman, the staff writer for the Houston Chronicle, would have done better to have written about what Whitcomb has done, not what he has not done. But then an article too friendly to the possibility of modern pterosaurs might not have been accepted for publication by her superiors.

December 22, 2010April 25, 2011

Science and Marfa Lights

A number of scientists have tried to know and understand Marfa Lights: observing, testing photographing, and theorizing. Interesting ideas have emerged; none but one, however, seems to come close to adequately explaining the apparent intellegence associated with those flying lights, the mystery lights of Marfa, Texas: a modern pterosaur.

James Bunnell, a retired aerospace engineer, has side-stepped the apparent intellegence associated with some sightings. But he has photographed a number of the “ML” (mystery lights) and analyzed the results.

Edson Hendricks, a Californian who has visited Texas and is a Marfa Light investigator, has also side-stepped the apparent intellegence associated with some sightings. But he has analyzed some of the data.

Jonathan Whitcomb, another scientist from California, has concentrated on the apparent intelligence, analyzing information from those sightings that might relate to the ropen lights of Papua New Guinea. And the results of that analysis might appear more like science fiction than science: nocturnal bioluminescent flying predators that might be related to ropens, even if that means a living pterosaur interpretation. Nevertheless, when extinction dogma is set aside, there is nothing unscientific about the hypothesis that Marfa Lights are caused by the bioluminescence of flying predators.

Some critics have disparaged the work of Jonathan Whitcomb, assuming that because he supports the work of his YEC creationist associates he is too biased to be taken seriously. By the same reasoning, one could reject Calculus because of the Biblical studies of Sir Isaac Newton. Religious intolerance, like that of Whitcomb’s critics, cannot refute the testimonies of eyewitnesses. Let it be observed that those eyewitnesses are the ones giving evidence, through their testimonies of modern pterosaurs, and those witnesses come from various religious and non-religious backgrounds, refuting the assumption of the critics, the presumption that reports of modern pterosaurs are the result of inappropriate insertion of religion into scientific work. Science will continue to progress, in spite of those shallow-minded critics.

In addition:

Official Site for “Live Pterosaurs in America”

The new official web site for the second edition of Live Pterosaurs in America is up. I think the banner is more attractive than the one on the old site. The home page is heavily promotional for selling the book; but another page, “Pterosaurs in the United States,” has some details about eyewitness sightings, quoting from the book:

“The flight destination may have been this meadow near Campus Drive.” The eyewitness described the dark giant flying creature as “30 feet long, with 15-16 feet of that being a tail.” It flew low over a road, near California State University at Irvine (in Southern California). The giant size, long tail, and obvious lack of any feathers made it very like the ropen of Papua New Guinea.