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“Pterodactyl Attacks”

The Pterosaur Eyewitness blog recently had a post titled “Pterodactyl Attacks and Human Deaths.” For me, it brings to mind native accounts from Papua New Guinea, but this is far closer to home, in British Columbia, Canada. For many years, there have been reports of people being attacked in Africa and in Papua New Guinea. I have only recently noticed this news about flying creatures attacking people in British Columbia at night. For the moment, I have little to add except to recommend this post I have mentioned and to quote from it.

I hope that no pterosaur was responsible for any of the human deaths in British Columbia, Canada, along the 500-mile stretch of highway from Prince George to Prince Rupert, but I also hope that all attacks from irresponsible humans, against innocent human victims, will cease, and that this world will become a paradise in which death itself will cease. Notwithstanding all our hopes for the future, however, we now face a present danger, a warning from Gerald McIsaac, author of Bird From Hell, who believes that “most of the hitchhikers [on this highway at night] who disappear have been killed by this animal. It is also my opinion that many of the people who have disappeared have not been reported.”

I said I had little to add but I retract that. In Papua New Guinea, deep in the mainland, in 2006, Paul Nation, from Texas, was searching for the flying creature that natives in Tawa Village call “indava.” He learned that those natives remember a time when the indava would fly down on Tawa and carry away a pig or a child. Attacks on natives and their pigs stopped when the natives learned to make a lot of noise when they heard the indavas coming; since then they have had little if any problems from indava attacks. Paul Nation believes the indava is the same kind or a similar kind of pterosaur as the ropen.

In the northern islands of Papua New Guinea, the natives call the ropen “kor.” It was said to have attacked Japanese soldiers during World War II. The Japanese retaliated, sending a ship’s bombardment onto one or more of the caves where the kor lived.

Other examples could be given from Africa, but I think this is cause enough, because of potential attacks from nocturnal flying creatures, for people in British Columbia to be careful when they are out at night.

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Namibia, Africa, Recent Sighting

Jonathan Whitcomb recently received an email from a man living in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, in southwest Africa. The anonymous eyewitness seems to be a native of Belgium, but he has been living much of his life in Namibia. After his wife disbelieved his account of the “prehistoric animal” that he had seen flying one morning, he dismissed the encounter from his mind. When he learned that other people had similar sightings, he contacted Whitcomb, giving the cryptozoologist his lengthy account.

2011 Pterosaur Sighting in Namibia

I paid attention to the wings as it would allow for identification – but this bird did not have any feathers, at least not any spread primary feathers (as eagles often show). It looked more like a large bat with distinctly brightly coloured (yellow-brown, orange?) protrusions, where birds have carpal joints (like some ‘spur-winged birds’). It showed a long, very long, slim neck (like of cranes or flamingos) . . .

The overall colour . . . was bright (whitish?). The colour of the body-and-wings was brownish . . . For the wingspan I would venture to say (based on comparison with again overflying aeroplanes’ wingspan) . . . that it was half of that of a small plane’s wing span . . .

Pterosaurs in Africa

Sudan Pterosaur:

. . . early one night in 1988, the boy noticed something on the roof of a nearby hut. Lit up by the patio light, perched on the edge of the roof, the creature appeared to be four-to-five feet tall, olive brown, and leathery (no feathers). A “long bone looking thing” stuck out the back of its head, and its long tail somehow resembled that of a lion.

Flying Snake or Pterosaur in Namibia:

. . . The flying snake, or whatever it was frightened Michael Esterhuise, a farm hand, severely and left a trace on the ground and a burning smell . . . It shot into the air again and made a sound like “wind blowing through a pipe” according to Lawrence Green in “These Wonders to Behold” (1959)

Marfa Lights Explained (Pterosaurs)

Of course, some of the strange lights observed by tourists visiting Marfa, Texas, can be explained as ordinary: car headlights on a nearby or distant highway; those lights are seen about every night. But other strange lights, observed only a few times each year, cannot be from car headlights. Those “mystery lights” have been labeled “CE-III” by James Bunnell, author of the book “Hunting Marfa Lights.”

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Modern Pterosaur Details

Darren Naish the paleontologist seems to me, in some of his writings, to be almost an enemy to cryptozoological research related to modern pterosaurs. He is determined to support pterosaur extinction in the face of increasing reports of eyewitness sightings.

Details are what make scientific progress possible, but Naish seems to always avoid mentioning any details involving sighting reports that are taken most seriously by the cryptozoologists most actively involved. He can write many paragraphs without mentioning even one sighting report, yet he tries to make it appear that all reports are wrong. It seems that all that is needed is the idea that standard assumptions of paleontology are threatened or at least appear to be threatened.

Naish has said that “Fossil evidence demonstrates overwhelmingly that pterosaurs did not survive beyond the end of the Cretaceous, and the sightings of pterosaur-like animals that have been reported appear to be a combination of hoaxes and misidentification of large birds and bats.” He then gives not a milligram of detail about even one sighting, let alone the many that have been investigated in detail by those who have written scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals of science: David Woetzel and Jonathan Whitcomb.

I’m sure that I have said this before, but it bears repeating. “Fossil evidence” does not demonstrate the extinction of even one species, let alone all species of pterosaurs. If that is not enough to astonish us, “overwhelmingly” strikes me as ludicrous for any scientist to use for an assumption of something that is so hotly contested, for that same word could just as well be used as follows: “Fossil evidence overwhelmingly lacks the power to demonstrate the extinction of all species of pterosaurs.”

In respect to the many eyewitnesses, those who have neither been mistaken with birds or bats or corrupted by a desire to perpetrate a hoax, I offer some details on a few sightings:

Dactyl or Delirius Driver?

I know that some skeptic can suggest drinking was the cause, but not everyone who drives a car has detailed delirium tremens hallucinations with giant Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs. In addition, even if one driver imagined a ‘dactyl or dinosaur bird flying in front of the windshield, such an imagination would never have an impact on other drivers, causing them to pull over to the side of the highway as the imaginative driver kept on driving normally.

South Carolina Sighting by Wooten – part of “Dactyl” post

Susan Wooten was driving . . . to the town of Florence, on a clear mid-afternoon in the fall of about 1989 . . . Where the road was surrounded by woods and swamps, Wooten saw something flying from her left, then passing in front of her . . . “It swooped down over the highway and back up gracefully over the pines,” but its appearance was shocking: “It looked as big as any car . . . NO feathers, not like a huge crane or egret, but like a humongous bat.”

Living Pterosaurs in the Philippines

“. . . what he called a “pterodactyl,” in fact two flying together, when he was a boy in the city of Pagbilao, Quezon Province . . . . they have long tails about 3 to 4 meters long . . .it is not a bird: They don’t have any feathers. . . . “I saw them clearly: the SHAPE, their BAT-LIKE WINGS, a LONG NECK and . . . They have a long beak. . . . They don’t have any feathers . . .”

Pterosaur in Cuba

It was a beautiful, clear summer day . . . I was looking in the direction of the ocean when I saw an incredible sight. It mesmerized me! . . .  I saw two Pterosaurs . . . flying together at low altitude, perhaps 100 feet, very close in range from where I was standing, so that I had a perfectly clear view . . . they had a long tail trailing behind with a tuft of hair at the end.”

Setting aside details now, here is something general about the kongamato of Africa:

Kongamato Pterosaur in Africa

He believes a large stingray could overturn a boat (“Kongamato” means overturner of boats), declaring that a pterosaur would never have enough mass to overturn a boat. I find a number of serious problems with that pterosaur-impossible assumption, although there may have been some instances of large stingrays being labeled “Kongamato.” The point is twofold: His dismissal of the pterosaur possibility is flawed and the dependence on the label “Kongamato” can cause problems as well as solve them.

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