I bend to popular practice. Enough Americans use the spelling “teradactyl” that it needs to be used to get decent results regarding online searches by those careless with spelling. I don’t mean to pick on the citizens of Texas regarding bad spelling, but I have noticed that many sightings have been reported in that state.

Marfa Lights Intelligence (in Texas)

Intelligent ghost lights, even when we use “ghost lights” loosely, can put us out on a limb. Almost nobody wants to jump onto that bandwagon or jump onto the back of a giant pterodactyl that might bite off ones head. College professors, in particular, feel vulnerable should they suggest intelligent modern pterosaurs are glowing at night in southwest Texas. Those professors could not easily take an accusation that they had taken something that makes them feel that they themselves are glowing, as well as imagining glowing pterosaurs.

From the book Live Pterosaurs in America:

At about the same time as the Texarkana sighting, between Houston and Pasadena, Texas, two men saw a pterosaur-like creature, but it was smaller and with a tail. . . .

RG and his friend, in the late afternoon of a clear day, were startled by a flying creature less than 150 feet away. For about fifteen seconds, they watched it fly, about fifty feet high, before it disappeared into some trees. The general appearance was “leathery” and it had a pointed beak and head appendage. The total length, about five feet, included about two feet of tail, the end of which had a “flange or sail.”

Teradactyl Sightings (in Georgia)

When that edition of the book was published, however, the eyewitness was anonymous, and I had no knowledge of her subsequent sightings in that area. In addition, she had not yet given me permission to publish any of her sketches. Those things have changed.

Whether you spell it “teradactyl” or “pterodactyl” or “pterosaur,” this flying creature shocks Texans who see them.

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 . . .”

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.