Cuba – Modern Pterosaur

October 19, 2018

New Book on Child (and Adult) Eyewitnesses of Living Pterosaurs

I quote from this nonfiction book, although this is a preliminary form of these sentences in this book, The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur:

Chapter 1: Patty Carson in Cuba (Guantanamo Bay)

Scientists use the word ‘pterosaur’ for a group of flying creatures that they know about because of fossils. Most people . . . use another word: ‘pterodactyl.’ That is not scientific, but most people are not scientists. That is why Patty used the word ‘pterodactyl.’

Her father did not believe her at first, but later may have been unsure. Patty’s older brother and sister later saw what may have been the same thing, but they did not see so clearly. . . .

Patty’s older brother, Tom, saw something like it about one year after her sighting, but he did not get such a good look. He saw it for only about three seconds. I talked with him by phone in 2011, and he answered my questions.

Tom was ten years old and was with two other boys. He saw the thing flying about 100 feet over their heads. It looked like it had no feathers, but Tom is not sure about that. It looked larger than a pelican.

Support From Eyewitness Eskin Kuhn

An extremely important point about the sightings those children had at Guantanamo Bay is this: A few years later, the U.S. Marine Eskin C. Kuhn had a sighting of two “pterodactyls,” also at Gitmo, and within minutes of his view of them he sketched what he had seen.

Sketches by Eskin Kuhn (left) and Patty Carson* (right; *reversed horizontally) – Notice similarities in the head crest and in the beak.

Real Eyewitnesses, Child and Adult

These two persons have given their real names to the world, so we’re not dealing with anonymous third-hand accounts. I, Jonathan Whitcomb, have questioned them many times, over a period of years, and I submit that they are both credible eyewitnesses of this kind of flying creature.

Patty Carson (her sighting was in 1965)
Eskin Kuhn (his sighting was in 1971)

This long-tailed featherless animal is now called ‘ropen.’ That name comes from the Kovai language of Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, where American explorers first searched, repeatedly, for a modern living pterosaur. I do not declare that the species of nocturnal flying creature on Umboi Island is the same species seen in Cuba in the mid-twentieth century, but I do suggest a close relationship may exist between them and that they are living pterosaurs.

Patty Carson points toward a popular island tourist attraction

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Books about the ropen, or “flying dinosaurs”

I’m presently writing a nonfiction book for children 8-12 years old. It should be published and in print sometime in November (2018): The Girl who saw a Flying Dinosaur.

Books about modern pterosaurs

Three nonfiction paperback books on these wonderful flying creatures, what some people call “pterodactyls” or “dinosaur birds,” and another book in digital format: Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea

Kids who see “pterodactyls”

Patty Carson was only a small child, when she and her brother saw a Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur in clear daylight, at the Guantanamo Bay military station in eastern Cuba, around 1965.

Child and his mother saw a dinosaur bird

After a hot afternoon in the Salt Lake Valley, on the first day of summer, a lady and her 12-year-old son decided to sleep in their backyard in western Draper and look at the stars, at least for the first part of the night. They had no idea that anyone had seen a huge dragon-like creature fly over the neighborhood earlier in the year.

Little girl saw a flying dinosaur

This eyewitness is Patty Carson, who saw one of the flying creatures at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, around 1965, when she was a child.

Ropens in North America

Sightings of modern pterosaurs in recent history:

California (three)
Louisiana
Cuba

Books on extant pterosaurs

These nonfiction books are divided into three types:

Worldwide sightings in general
Pterosaur encounters in North America
Sightings in the Southwest Pacific

July 15, 2013September 4, 2013

Pterosaurs and Woodpeckers in Cuba

Dale A. Drinnon used to attribute pterosaur sightings to Manta rays jumping out of the water. Perhaps he later came to realize that most sightings are not over water. More recently, he has thrown up woodpeckers, including extinct ones at that, as a plausible explanation. In April of 2012, he suggested such birds as the cause of two sightings in Cuba many years ago. His post is titled “Cuban Pterosaurs?”

sketch of pterosaur seen by Patty Carson in Cuba in 1965

Sketch by the eyewitness Patty Carson: 1965 sighting in Cuba

Drinnon said:

The mixed-trait Pterosaurs do not exist in Paleontology but they DO occur commonly in popular cartoons such as The Flintstones in the 1960s. Therefore the asumption [sic] that such creatures ever existed as such in real life is born in a pre-conceived notion out of such representations as the Flintstones cartoon and born out of ignorance.

To the best of my memory, most of the flying things in the old Flintstones cartoons were feathered birds, not pterosaurs, so that reference is irrelevant, even if Drinnon did show some reason that eyewitnesses were influenced by cartoons from the 1960’s. He does not, however, show any evidence for any such influence.

Drinnon mentions “ignorance,” as if that explains something about what eyewitnesses describe. But that critic does not openly say anything about any hoax. I say that Drinnon himself is not as knowledgeable as he needs to be on the subject of pterosaur fossils. He should have done more research before making the statements he made.

He said, “Basically Pterosaurs came in two large groups,” but he went on to generalize that all of one group had head crests and all of the other group had long tails. He thinks that there is no mixture of those traits in any of the fossils. That is wrong. There were at least a small number of basal pterosaurs that had head crests, and basal pterosaurs are the ones that had long tails.

Drinnon also may be ignorant of recent discoveries in paleontology, in particular regarding head crests in some pterosaurs. At least some of those head crests grew as the creatures aged, meaning larger pterosaurs had head crests that might not have been noticeable in smaller ones of the same species. Drinnon does not take that into consideration regarding modern sightings.

He also seems to be under the assumption that no pterosaur could ever have existed unless it closely resembled a fossil that somebody has discovered up until the present. That kind of thinking would result in a future pterosaur fossil being rejected as a hoax just because of its being different from any previously known fossil.

two pterosaurs sketched by eyewitness Eskin Kuhn

Sketch by eyewitness Eskin C. Kuhn: 1971 sighting in Cuba

Drinnon says that the above sketch by Mr. Kuhn came from an encounter with two ivory-billed woodpeckers. Drinnon says that Kuhn was “startled and the sighting was brief.” Where does the critic get those ideas about the eyewitness being startled and the sighting being brief? The critic probably knows nothing about the Whitcomb-Kuhn interview in which the eyewitness said the following:

I really tried to “cram” my study at that time, focusing on details as well as taking in the overall form and motion of the pair in flight. I tried to memorize the details that would enable me to commit them to paper in a sketch so as to accurately define the creature. Some of the things that I focused on were the bony vertebrae of the back that were clearly defined . . .

That does not sound at all like a brief sighting or a misunderstanding that came from being startled. In fact, I don’t recall anything in Kuhn’s writings that he was startled at any time during the sighting of the two “pterodactyls.” Like most eyewitnesses, he was surprised at the details that he saw, but that is the opposite of what Drinnon talks about. Kuhn was surprised by the strange features of what he saw, he was not imagining things because of a surprise. Drinnon turns things upside down with his faulty reasoning.

Perching Pterosaur, not Woodpecker

Dale A. Drinnon has another explanation for pterosaur sightings in Southern California. He now says it’s a woodpecker.

Two Pterosaur Sightings in Cuba

A lady living in California, has come forward, supporting the U.S. Marine’s testimony with her own sighting report. Patty Carson observed a single pterosaur, about six years before the sighting by Kuhn.

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