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Darren Naish Comments on Pterosaur Fossils

On the Live Pterosaur post “Pterosaur Extinction Revisited,” the well-known pterosaur fossil expert Darren Naish has given two comments in twelve days. Few paleontologists give much attention to cryptozoological investigations, at least until recently.

First Comment (excerpt):

By the end of the Late Cretaceous, it seems that only two or three pterosaur lineages were still in existence – there were not, so far as we know, 100s of species representing numerous lineages. Those Late Cretaceous pterosaur lineages persist to the end of the Maastrichtian age of the Late Cretaceous, but are absent from the fossil record of the entire Cenozoic. There is thus every reason for thinking that pterosaurs (a) were already at low diversity at the very end of the Late Cretaceous, and (b) died out during the mass extinction event that occurred at the end of the Late Cretaceous. There is no evidence for post-Cretaceous pterosaurs . . .

Question:

How many pterosaur fossils have been discovered and dated in the Cretaceous?

Answer (excerpt of second comment):

. . . Pterosaurs are not numerous fossils for several obvious reasons, but we’re talking about 1000s of specimens (Bennett, in his 2001 osteology of _Pteranodon_, refers to 1100 specimens of _Pteranodon_ alone). Nevertheless, there are several key references that at least give a good idea of the taxa involved, most notably…

Barrett, P. M., Butler, R. J., Edwards, N. P. & Milner, A. R. 2008. Pterosaur distribution in time and space: an atlas. Zitteliana B, 28, 61-107.

What I would ask is this: “Related to the statement ‘there is no evidence for post-Cretaceous pterosaurs,’ was there any evidence for post-Cretaceous Coelacanths before the discovery of the living Coelacanths?”

I would also ask, “Is it possible that at least a few of those thousands of discovered pterosaur fossils actually prevented the strata from being dated as post-Cretaceous?” Could there have been any inadvertant circular reasoning in this assumption that all pterosaur fossils have been from ancient life?

The problem with getting an objective evaluation of this fossil dating is in the deeply-entrenched assumption of pterosaur extinction and the assumption that they only lived many millions of years ago. That could have influenced the dating of some of the strata from which the pterosaur fossils were taken, invalidating the claim that all those fossils had been proven to be ancient.

If Mr. Naish is correct, however, in the claim that popular axioms of paleontology make modern pterosaurs extremely unlikely, then the discovery of one or more species of living pterosaur would strongly support Biblical Creation axioms and repudiate Darwin’s. You cannot have it both ways, claiming one thing contrary to what your opponent predicts, then saying it means nothing when your opponent’s prediction turns out to be correct.

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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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Fossils and Pterosaurs

Much has been written, in blog posts and in direct comments, about this page by Darren Naish: “Pterosaurs alive in, like, the modern day.” I will not give any more attention to his one-sided coverage of the issue, for he is a well-known paleontologist and has received attention enough. Most of his page involves the straw-man argument, for serious researchers use recent eyewitness account-testimony rather than most of the old reports Naish has listed and blasted.

I bring up a point he and other paleontologists have avoided or have been oblivious to: If an absence of pterosaur fossils in certain strata (or apparent absence, depending on origins philosophy) seems to say, “No pterosaurs are expected to be presently living,” what about the absence of fossils of ancestors of pterosaurs? That absence would have to say, “No pterosaur ancestors preceded the pterosaurs that left fossils.” Would Naish deny that there is an apparent lack of fossils of pterosaur ancestors? Compared to how many fossils we have of pterosaurs, how rare the fossil fragments that might have been from a pterosaur ancestor and shows evidence for being so!

I bring up that point because there are serious weaknesses in the idea that fossils can be used as evidence for widespread extinctions of general classes of organisms. Why not choose the less-popular road, and think reasonably and openly about real possibilities, rather than ridicule old reports of living pterosaurs and ignore the recent reports?

One way to support at least one of the investigations is to purchase the non-fiction cryptozoology book Live Pterosaurs in America. This deserved public attention.

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